How did I forget to mention the most interesting part of our Asian cabinmate on the trenhotel? When we walked into El Sobrino de Botín there she was, chatting away with someone in a rapid language I could not possibly understand with smiles and drinks abounding. SB stopped in the doorway, pulled me aside, and whispered, “Is that her?”
It was strange to see someone we had only encountered as silent laughing and speaking so animatedly. Then again, I’ve discovered that perceptions in general are quite different in Spain. For example, I am of average height in this country, whereas in the US I am daily made fun of for my lack of stature. Another example: the other night as SB and were walking back to our hotel I saw an attractive young girl leaning against the wall in an extremely short, tight dress. After we passed her I wondered aloud, “A prostitute?”
SB looked back. “Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “People just dress like that here.”
Half a block later I saw another young girl leaning against the wall in a similarly provocative outfit, only this one was particularly unattractive. “I think they’re prostitutes,” I repeated to SB.
We studied the walk in front of us and decided that yes, there was a line of prostitutes standing in the shadows, even along the wall of McDonald’s, which seems to me the most depressing place to decide to pay for sex (excepting maybe a Burger King, since they don’t even have free Wifi). After that we started searching for them at night. They’re really all over the city, and are most recognizable not by their outfits but by the fact that they stand idly by a wall flicking a cigarette between their fingers. Sometimes a normal girl stands against the wall between two prostitutes, but you can usually tell the difference because the normal girl will be on the phone, usually screaming at her boyfriend or telling her mom that she’s just going to the movies with some friends. Also the normal girl always has a purse, and the prostitutes seem to miraculously carry money, phone, lipgloss, ID (maybe not ID, I suppose), and condoms in some easily imaginable location barely covered by the scanty cloth pasted suggestively to a few random areas of skin. Really I’m more impressed by these prostitutes than anything else, because they also appear to stand for hours in heels longer than the length of my forearm.
I hope they get paid well. I was thinking about this as we walked through the Mercado de San Miguel, where among the fresh fruit and hanging legs of pork and intricately designed mini cakes we stopped for a bit of caviar. This sounds more lavish than it really was: an ample amount of caviar was spread onto a small piece of crunchy bread tapas-style and each piece was sold for 1 Euro. Though I realize that 1 Euro equates to roughly $5, the caviar still was lumped on the bread so that a hefty mound accumulated on top, and I felt I was getting much more than my Euro’s worth. I wondered, do prostitutes come to the Mercado de San Miguel during the day and eat 1 Euro caviar tapas? Or do they spend all their money on nicer shoes so that they are more comfortable when standing up? I asked SB and she made a face and said, “Who cares?”
This was actually a valid point. I am not in the habit of wondering such things about people of other professions. However, though I have seen only few prostitutes in my time, these seemed better groomed and more secure than the ones I’ve encountered in the US or Africa. Most of the ones here in Madrid are even attractive and almost indistinguishable from the other girls around. This makes me wonder about their lives – are they choosing to be prostitutes? If so, why? And is prostitution legal in Spain?
This is just one example of how traveling opens your mind.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Chariothotels of Fire - and the Old Madrid of Daddy's Map
As expected, the trenhotel from Lisbon to Madrid was both cramped and oddly entertaining. SB and I arrived at the train station in our Mercedes cab half an hour early, so we sat at the Telepizza (the only restaurant or café around) and worked on our computers in sweltering heat while we waited. We could see where our train would pull in, and about ten minutes before we were to depart I got a bit concerned that the train appeared to not yet be there and wondered whether it had been delayed. I handed SB her ticket as we gathered up our luggage and left the Telepizza, and upon approaching the platform we realized the train had actually stopped quite a ways back but that everyone was boarding. As our car was at the very end of the train, we had to drag our luggage for several minutes until we reached the compartment and boarded.
“What bed are you?” I asked my sister.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
I rolled my eyes. “Look at your ticket,” I said.
“You have my ticket,” she said.
I have this instinct where I start panicking as soon as a situation looks like it might merit said panic. “No, I handed it to you in the pizza place. Are you sure you don’t have it?” We were in the door of the train and people were starting to line up behind us. When SB shook her head and started trying to explain, I shoved my bag into our compartment and yelled at her to get on the train and look for the ticket as I started a sprint back to the Telepizza.
“Four minutes!” a train conductor called cheerfully at me as I blazed past.
I had two things on my side for this sprint: I had chosen to wear my Pumas that night instead of flip-flops and I had been training for a half-marathon. The train really was quite far away from the beginning of the platform – probably about a fifth of a mile – and when I neared Telepizza and considered slowing down for entrance to the restaurant I thought about the train pulling away without me. I would be stranded in Lisbon without my passport, ID, money, clothes – I pushed people to the side and bounded to our table, where SB had absent-mindedly put down her ticket while trying to get all of her luggage together. Even in my crazed state I was surprised it was still there, but I lunged across the table and spun back into a sprint to our train, ticket balled up in one hand and phone clutched to my chest with the other. The train conductor smiled at me as I passed him and I wished “Chariots of Fire” were playing.
As soon as I stepped into the compartment, dripping with sweat and holding the ticket aloft victoriously, the train lurched to a start. Three minutes later I was still wiping myself down and reveling in my awesomeness when a conductor came by to take our tickets. “What would have happened if I didn’t have mine?” SB asked, wide-eyed.
“They would have kicked you off,” I joked.
“In the middle of nowhere?” she wondered, aghast.
I looked out the window to find we were at Lisbon’s second-largest international train station and blinked at her before opening my computer to upload my pictures.
Our bunkmates were interesting. One was a pretty Asian girl who knew very little English and looked more uncomfortable when we tried to communicate with her than when we left her alone. This made me a little sad because she seemed cool – once we had all settled down she pulled a beer out of her bag and sat back on her bed reading a guidebook in Chinese and drinking.
In what must have been an attempt to make up for the Asian girl’s lack of speaking, our other bunkmate, a newlywed Australian woman who was half Portuguese and half East-Timorese, told us her entire life story. We even learned how much she weighed and how much weight she lost before her maid of honor (and best friend for 17 years) and she had a falling-out and the maid of honor decided not to be in the wedding. Then we learned how much she gained back and how she planned to lose it again. This was only a small portion of her life into which we were privileged to have insight.
At last we reached Madrid. Upon arriving at our hotel we were thrilled to discover that we could go ahead and check in to our room, which meant showers before exploring the city. As we had traipsed around Lisbon the day before in the heat and then been rather warm in our pods on the trenhotel, we really were in dire need of showers. Refreshed, we headed to the nearest café to look over the various maps we’d been given and figure out how to reach “Old Madrid.”
While delayed due to his plane’s altercation with a large bird, our father actually spent an afternoon in Madrid about two months ago, and before I left for the old country he gave it to me. He also gave me a notebook with his notes on the entire fiasco. My sister and I had read the notebook the night before at a restaurant in Lisbon and laughed so loudly at his descriptions that the waiters thought something was wrong; at the café we unfolded his map and were delighted to find that he had actually seen all the major sites of Old Madrid and helpfully circled each one and drawn an arrow between them. In fact, he had created a perfect itinerary for us. We finished our coffee and smoothies and headed out.
Madrid turned out to be quite temperate in spite of what everyone told us – I suppose because it is already the end of August and so really the heat of the summer has already passed. We hit all the major tourist sites and collapsed exhausted in a Mexican restaurant before a quick siesta, then headed back out to see the Reina Sofia. Neither of us is much for modern art, but we wanted to see the Picassos and Dalis there, and we ended up walking around the museum for more than two hours before our next food stop at the oldest restaurant in the world.
Though we had trouble finding it, El Sobrino del Botín turned out to be everything we hoped. It was a bit expensive, but luckily due to our late Mexican lunch we weren’t too hungry and ended up splitting the suckling pig (the restaurant’s specialty). The inside was old-timey and charming, the menus had the history of the place, the waiters were kind and attentive, and there was even a Mariachi band that tried to play “Waka-Waka” when we requested it (yes, we were those people).
The weird thing about Madrid is that you walk to these historic buildings and look at them and take pictures of them, but they seem less beautiful than they would be anywhere else because all the buildings in Madrid are historic and beautiful. Even the farmacias and cinemas and our hotel are in intricately carved stone buildings. It kind of makes being a tourist more difficult.
Today we ran through Parque del Retiro and are about to go to the Prado, which everyone tells us is the Louvre of Spain. If this is the case we’re going to need more than just today, but as we only have tomorrow left we will just have to be efficient art observers. Hopefully the coffee from the McCafé, Europe’s answer to McDonald’s (we are here because of the free McWifi and free McRestrooms), will aid us in our endeavors.
“What bed are you?” I asked my sister.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
I rolled my eyes. “Look at your ticket,” I said.
“You have my ticket,” she said.
I have this instinct where I start panicking as soon as a situation looks like it might merit said panic. “No, I handed it to you in the pizza place. Are you sure you don’t have it?” We were in the door of the train and people were starting to line up behind us. When SB shook her head and started trying to explain, I shoved my bag into our compartment and yelled at her to get on the train and look for the ticket as I started a sprint back to the Telepizza.
“Four minutes!” a train conductor called cheerfully at me as I blazed past.
I had two things on my side for this sprint: I had chosen to wear my Pumas that night instead of flip-flops and I had been training for a half-marathon. The train really was quite far away from the beginning of the platform – probably about a fifth of a mile – and when I neared Telepizza and considered slowing down for entrance to the restaurant I thought about the train pulling away without me. I would be stranded in Lisbon without my passport, ID, money, clothes – I pushed people to the side and bounded to our table, where SB had absent-mindedly put down her ticket while trying to get all of her luggage together. Even in my crazed state I was surprised it was still there, but I lunged across the table and spun back into a sprint to our train, ticket balled up in one hand and phone clutched to my chest with the other. The train conductor smiled at me as I passed him and I wished “Chariots of Fire” were playing.
As soon as I stepped into the compartment, dripping with sweat and holding the ticket aloft victoriously, the train lurched to a start. Three minutes later I was still wiping myself down and reveling in my awesomeness when a conductor came by to take our tickets. “What would have happened if I didn’t have mine?” SB asked, wide-eyed.
“They would have kicked you off,” I joked.
“In the middle of nowhere?” she wondered, aghast.
I looked out the window to find we were at Lisbon’s second-largest international train station and blinked at her before opening my computer to upload my pictures.
Our bunkmates were interesting. One was a pretty Asian girl who knew very little English and looked more uncomfortable when we tried to communicate with her than when we left her alone. This made me a little sad because she seemed cool – once we had all settled down she pulled a beer out of her bag and sat back on her bed reading a guidebook in Chinese and drinking.
In what must have been an attempt to make up for the Asian girl’s lack of speaking, our other bunkmate, a newlywed Australian woman who was half Portuguese and half East-Timorese, told us her entire life story. We even learned how much she weighed and how much weight she lost before her maid of honor (and best friend for 17 years) and she had a falling-out and the maid of honor decided not to be in the wedding. Then we learned how much she gained back and how she planned to lose it again. This was only a small portion of her life into which we were privileged to have insight.
At last we reached Madrid. Upon arriving at our hotel we were thrilled to discover that we could go ahead and check in to our room, which meant showers before exploring the city. As we had traipsed around Lisbon the day before in the heat and then been rather warm in our pods on the trenhotel, we really were in dire need of showers. Refreshed, we headed to the nearest café to look over the various maps we’d been given and figure out how to reach “Old Madrid.”
While delayed due to his plane’s altercation with a large bird, our father actually spent an afternoon in Madrid about two months ago, and before I left for the old country he gave it to me. He also gave me a notebook with his notes on the entire fiasco. My sister and I had read the notebook the night before at a restaurant in Lisbon and laughed so loudly at his descriptions that the waiters thought something was wrong; at the café we unfolded his map and were delighted to find that he had actually seen all the major sites of Old Madrid and helpfully circled each one and drawn an arrow between them. In fact, he had created a perfect itinerary for us. We finished our coffee and smoothies and headed out.
Madrid turned out to be quite temperate in spite of what everyone told us – I suppose because it is already the end of August and so really the heat of the summer has already passed. We hit all the major tourist sites and collapsed exhausted in a Mexican restaurant before a quick siesta, then headed back out to see the Reina Sofia. Neither of us is much for modern art, but we wanted to see the Picassos and Dalis there, and we ended up walking around the museum for more than two hours before our next food stop at the oldest restaurant in the world.
Though we had trouble finding it, El Sobrino del Botín turned out to be everything we hoped. It was a bit expensive, but luckily due to our late Mexican lunch we weren’t too hungry and ended up splitting the suckling pig (the restaurant’s specialty). The inside was old-timey and charming, the menus had the history of the place, the waiters were kind and attentive, and there was even a Mariachi band that tried to play “Waka-Waka” when we requested it (yes, we were those people).
The weird thing about Madrid is that you walk to these historic buildings and look at them and take pictures of them, but they seem less beautiful than they would be anywhere else because all the buildings in Madrid are historic and beautiful. Even the farmacias and cinemas and our hotel are in intricately carved stone buildings. It kind of makes being a tourist more difficult.
Today we ran through Parque del Retiro and are about to go to the Prado, which everyone tells us is the Louvre of Spain. If this is the case we’re going to need more than just today, but as we only have tomorrow left we will just have to be efficient art observers. Hopefully the coffee from the McCafé, Europe’s answer to McDonald’s (we are here because of the free McWifi and free McRestrooms), will aid us in our endeavors.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Drive My Car
One of the first things I noticed about Portugal is that all the taxicabs are Mercedes. In general the cars here are much nicer – and bigger – than I’ve seen in other major European cities. In the three days we’ve been here in Lisbon we’ve even seen Range Rovers and both BMW and Porches SUVs. Maybe this is just a drastic change from Vermont, but I don’t remember these types of cars in Paris or Florence or Valencia.
I’ve been trying to reconcile Portugal with the stereotypes I learned at Portuguese camp, but so far not many fit. The Portuguese are supposed to be a depressed people who wear lots of black and only listen to sad, slow songs, and even if their team is in the semi-finals of the World Cup they’ll not get excited because they know in their hearts they’ll just lose. This is what I learned as the stereotype. I haven’t noticed people wearing much black, they listen to a lot of techno (at least the cab drivers and shop owners do), and I really don’t know their views on the country soccer team. But they drive nice cars and the waiters are mean.
SB and I were at a restaurant the other day and the waiter stood impatiently by the table while we looked over the menu. “How’s the swordfish?” SB asked.
He grimaced. “Okay,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, what’s good here? What would you recommend?”
He shrugged. “The swordfish, I guess,” he said.
We looked at each other across the table and SB raised her eyebrows. She confirmed later that her thoughts mirrored mine: If the swordfish is the best thing on the menu and it’s only okay, should we go to a different restaurant?
That’s just the way most of the waiters are here, though. It’s honestly what I expected when I first visited Barcelona in 2003 – I figured if a waiter is not tipped he has no incentive to be nice. Pleasantly, I’ve found throughout Spain, France, Italy, and Scotland that the waiters were friendly and helpful on the whole. However, this is certainly not the norm in Portugal, where a snarl is more likely than a smile from your local garçon.
Today we lunched close to the Castelo at a café in the shade on a steep hill. Inevitably we take too long to decide on our food for even the friendliest Portuguese waiter, and today he stood beside our table tapping our pen until we sent him away – four times. Despite him we had a wonderful midday meal and got to watch the tourists with enough leg muscle to make their way up the hill to the Castle as we ate.
Afterward we took a boat tour around the coast of the city and saw all the sites we’d already seen – but from the water. Though not informative it was relaxing and entirely breathtaking to see the monument and tower across the Tagas, and with our free cokes and waters and our student tickets we felt we were getting a great deal. SB got to talking with the woman at the bar for a while and ended up with an extra coke, so she sat awkwardly with it as we tried to decide to which tourist we should offer it. I wanted to try the pregnant woman first, but then an argument ensued over whether pregnant women could have caffeine. As I do not study science I deferred to SB, who said they cannot, and we offered the coke to a different woman sitting close to us. She shook her head but pointed to the pregnant woman, who eagerly stretched out her arm for the beverage. This, of course, does not resolve our debate, as European women no doubt do lots of things while pregnant that Americans find abominable.
Tonight begins my second (and last?) journey by overnight train. We arrive at Madrid a little after 9am tomorrow and will start the museum section of our great sisterly European adventure. It promises to be less exciting to write about (WOW, the Picasso was just really really cool to see in person and descriptions or photographs just don’t do it justice!). Até logo...
I’ve been trying to reconcile Portugal with the stereotypes I learned at Portuguese camp, but so far not many fit. The Portuguese are supposed to be a depressed people who wear lots of black and only listen to sad, slow songs, and even if their team is in the semi-finals of the World Cup they’ll not get excited because they know in their hearts they’ll just lose. This is what I learned as the stereotype. I haven’t noticed people wearing much black, they listen to a lot of techno (at least the cab drivers and shop owners do), and I really don’t know their views on the country soccer team. But they drive nice cars and the waiters are mean.
SB and I were at a restaurant the other day and the waiter stood impatiently by the table while we looked over the menu. “How’s the swordfish?” SB asked.
He grimaced. “Okay,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, what’s good here? What would you recommend?”
He shrugged. “The swordfish, I guess,” he said.
We looked at each other across the table and SB raised her eyebrows. She confirmed later that her thoughts mirrored mine: If the swordfish is the best thing on the menu and it’s only okay, should we go to a different restaurant?
That’s just the way most of the waiters are here, though. It’s honestly what I expected when I first visited Barcelona in 2003 – I figured if a waiter is not tipped he has no incentive to be nice. Pleasantly, I’ve found throughout Spain, France, Italy, and Scotland that the waiters were friendly and helpful on the whole. However, this is certainly not the norm in Portugal, where a snarl is more likely than a smile from your local garçon.
Today we lunched close to the Castelo at a café in the shade on a steep hill. Inevitably we take too long to decide on our food for even the friendliest Portuguese waiter, and today he stood beside our table tapping our pen until we sent him away – four times. Despite him we had a wonderful midday meal and got to watch the tourists with enough leg muscle to make their way up the hill to the Castle as we ate.
Afterward we took a boat tour around the coast of the city and saw all the sites we’d already seen – but from the water. Though not informative it was relaxing and entirely breathtaking to see the monument and tower across the Tagas, and with our free cokes and waters and our student tickets we felt we were getting a great deal. SB got to talking with the woman at the bar for a while and ended up with an extra coke, so she sat awkwardly with it as we tried to decide to which tourist we should offer it. I wanted to try the pregnant woman first, but then an argument ensued over whether pregnant women could have caffeine. As I do not study science I deferred to SB, who said they cannot, and we offered the coke to a different woman sitting close to us. She shook her head but pointed to the pregnant woman, who eagerly stretched out her arm for the beverage. This, of course, does not resolve our debate, as European women no doubt do lots of things while pregnant that Americans find abominable.
Tonight begins my second (and last?) journey by overnight train. We arrive at Madrid a little after 9am tomorrow and will start the museum section of our great sisterly European adventure. It promises to be less exciting to write about (WOW, the Picasso was just really really cool to see in person and descriptions or photographs just don’t do it justice!). Até logo...
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Indochina
Today we caught the 15 tram to Belém, home to pasteis de nata. After spending all morning walking along the coast and taking pictures until our camera batteries died (again wearing our Pumas), we made our way into the actual town of Belém and tasted pasteis de nata from the shop reputed to have created them. The lady at the counter sprinkled them with cinnamon and powdered sugar before handing them to us.
It’s difficult for me to describe how amazing they were. SB kept saying, “They melt on your tongue. They melt on your tongue!”
After pastries we toured the old monastery in the town, which is absolutely breathtaking. Apparently it’s a demonstration of the height of the period of discoveries, which I guess makes sense because it dwarfs everything else in the town except the monument of the discoveries. The tower of Belém is also pretty cool, especially since it was just built as a fortress and only has a prison in the basement as an afterthought. For some reason I was under the impression that towers were exclusively prisons, but this one has intricately decorated quarters inside.
We returned to Lisbon around 4, exhausted from walking all day in the sun, and chose a refreshing siesta over a strong cup of coffee. Next on the agenda was the famous Café Brasileira in the Chiado district, and then a quick stop back by our favorite café (not because of the food or atmosphere, but because they have free Wifi. Actually, the password is hilarious – it’s “Indochina”. I actually cracked up when the woman at the counter gave it to me and she thought I needed her to repeat it because I didn’t understand) to do a bit of work before supper.
Throughout all of this I have been unpleasantly sneezing and sniffling, much to the dismay of anyone around me. I try to tell them it is not my fault and that SB gave me the plague, but usually they turn away and leave as quickly as possible. This really has worked out well for us, since most people here smoke and this makes them move away from us.
Tomorrow: the castle!
It’s difficult for me to describe how amazing they were. SB kept saying, “They melt on your tongue. They melt on your tongue!”
After pastries we toured the old monastery in the town, which is absolutely breathtaking. Apparently it’s a demonstration of the height of the period of discoveries, which I guess makes sense because it dwarfs everything else in the town except the monument of the discoveries. The tower of Belém is also pretty cool, especially since it was just built as a fortress and only has a prison in the basement as an afterthought. For some reason I was under the impression that towers were exclusively prisons, but this one has intricately decorated quarters inside.
We returned to Lisbon around 4, exhausted from walking all day in the sun, and chose a refreshing siesta over a strong cup of coffee. Next on the agenda was the famous Café Brasileira in the Chiado district, and then a quick stop back by our favorite café (not because of the food or atmosphere, but because they have free Wifi. Actually, the password is hilarious – it’s “Indochina”. I actually cracked up when the woman at the counter gave it to me and she thought I needed her to repeat it because I didn’t understand) to do a bit of work before supper.
Throughout all of this I have been unpleasantly sneezing and sniffling, much to the dismay of anyone around me. I try to tell them it is not my fault and that SB gave me the plague, but usually they turn away and leave as quickly as possible. This really has worked out well for us, since most people here smoke and this makes them move away from us.
Tomorrow: the castle!
Filhas da Puma
Until my trip from Madrid to Lisbon I had never ridden on an overnight train, or Trenhotel (as they dubbed them in Spain). I would profess to never ride another but I already have my trip back to Madrid booked, and SB’s said I’m going to be on the top bunk this time. I can only hope our two other turistas señoras are as nice next time.
We ended up with a mother and daughter from Portugal who kindly helped us cram SB’s two months worth of luggage into our tiny compartment, and then stayed relatively silent (as did we) for most of the trip. I can’t imagine being a large man – or even a normal-sized man – on one of those bunk beds. They were barely big enough for me. I spent a few hours trying to format a document for work and pining for the internet, then got too hot from resting my warm laptop on top of the covers and just lay in bed pining for the internet (the internet would indubitably have made the heat worthwhile). I also watched the sun rise over what was probably western Spain.
When we woke up we learned that our train had been delayed a little over an hour, so we went to drink coffee and tea in the cafeteria car. I brought my computer and we both pined for the internet, especially as I particularly wanted to respond to an email from my boss. SB struck up a conversation with an English cowboy type who informed us that “stray animal problems” were the reason for the delay. SB thought it was a squirrel or something, but he shook his head solemnly and intoned, “Cattle.”
I kind of thought we would have felt it if the train had hit a COW, but I just stared forlornly at my wireless status symbol and tried to soothe myself and my computer.
Eventually we did reach Lisbon, which must be the city with the steepest hills in the world. We were too early to check in to the hotel so we left our bags and went on a search for new walking shoes for SB, who only had every other pair of shoes invented in her bag (including running shoes which apparently are uncomfortable to walk in). After several stores disappointed us with their lack of Pumas (the only type of shoe that makes hills comfortable for walking, obviously), we wandered into a sports shoe store and SB chose a pair of white sneakers with red stripes. I wanted her to get black ones with white stripes, so she and I would match, or at least white ones with sparkly pink stripes so she would sparkle (and be pink), but she ignored me and got the ones with red. I hoped at least everyone would notice that we were both wearing Pumas, but as of this evening I had no such luck.
We strolled through the main streets and prazas in our Pumas fielding catcalls, which was certainly a result of our awesome sneakers matched with skirts. Upon taking in the cameras strapped to our wrists and my blond hair it was pretty obvious that we were hardcore American tourists, so the catcalls probably had more to do with men who wanted green cards than our shoes, but we pranced along anyway.
Until lunch we wandered around Lisbon’s main streets, hitting most of the main monuments and historical plazas in Bairro Baixa, including an accidental arrival at the coast and a stroll down Rua Augusta (we took lots of pictures beside the sign). We were determined to have lunch at Casa do Alentejo, a lavishly decorated Moorish home converted into a restaurant/historical site, so we spent about half an hour getting lost until we finally asked a waiter for another restaurant for his help. He stared at us like we were idiots and pointed across the street. Though I had asked him how to find the restaurant in Portuguese, he answered in English, making me feel even more like the American tourist I am.
Alentejo was worth it, though. We feasted for 15 Euros each on a three-course meal with wine, olives, and bread, surrounded by the intricately tiled interior of Casa do Alentejo, and left quite satisfied with our persistence.
We checked into the hotel and showered, and I changed into something a little less American – my Obama shirt. That evening we happened upon a Fado show in Chiado (called “Fado in Chiado”) that was tucked away on a side street in a theater far too large for the audience. I worried that the performance would be a bit sub-par in consideration of how few people turned up, but SB and I wanted to experience traditional Portuguese music, and Fado is about as traditional as Portuguese music gets, so we sat in the front and prepared ourselves for the possibility of fifty minutes of bad music. As it turned out, our worries were entirely unfounded – the four performers were amazing and the music was beautiful. At one point the male cantor asked if there were any Americans in the audience, and I proudly jumped up and down while SB shrunk further into her seat beside me.
We topped the night off with sopa de caldo verde and bachalhau com netas, traditional Portuguese food, before heading back up to the Chiado area for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. We finally fell into bed, exhausted, after formulating plans to head to Belém the next day.
We ended up with a mother and daughter from Portugal who kindly helped us cram SB’s two months worth of luggage into our tiny compartment, and then stayed relatively silent (as did we) for most of the trip. I can’t imagine being a large man – or even a normal-sized man – on one of those bunk beds. They were barely big enough for me. I spent a few hours trying to format a document for work and pining for the internet, then got too hot from resting my warm laptop on top of the covers and just lay in bed pining for the internet (the internet would indubitably have made the heat worthwhile). I also watched the sun rise over what was probably western Spain.
When we woke up we learned that our train had been delayed a little over an hour, so we went to drink coffee and tea in the cafeteria car. I brought my computer and we both pined for the internet, especially as I particularly wanted to respond to an email from my boss. SB struck up a conversation with an English cowboy type who informed us that “stray animal problems” were the reason for the delay. SB thought it was a squirrel or something, but he shook his head solemnly and intoned, “Cattle.”
I kind of thought we would have felt it if the train had hit a COW, but I just stared forlornly at my wireless status symbol and tried to soothe myself and my computer.
Eventually we did reach Lisbon, which must be the city with the steepest hills in the world. We were too early to check in to the hotel so we left our bags and went on a search for new walking shoes for SB, who only had every other pair of shoes invented in her bag (including running shoes which apparently are uncomfortable to walk in). After several stores disappointed us with their lack of Pumas (the only type of shoe that makes hills comfortable for walking, obviously), we wandered into a sports shoe store and SB chose a pair of white sneakers with red stripes. I wanted her to get black ones with white stripes, so she and I would match, or at least white ones with sparkly pink stripes so she would sparkle (and be pink), but she ignored me and got the ones with red. I hoped at least everyone would notice that we were both wearing Pumas, but as of this evening I had no such luck.
We strolled through the main streets and prazas in our Pumas fielding catcalls, which was certainly a result of our awesome sneakers matched with skirts. Upon taking in the cameras strapped to our wrists and my blond hair it was pretty obvious that we were hardcore American tourists, so the catcalls probably had more to do with men who wanted green cards than our shoes, but we pranced along anyway.
Until lunch we wandered around Lisbon’s main streets, hitting most of the main monuments and historical plazas in Bairro Baixa, including an accidental arrival at the coast and a stroll down Rua Augusta (we took lots of pictures beside the sign). We were determined to have lunch at Casa do Alentejo, a lavishly decorated Moorish home converted into a restaurant/historical site, so we spent about half an hour getting lost until we finally asked a waiter for another restaurant for his help. He stared at us like we were idiots and pointed across the street. Though I had asked him how to find the restaurant in Portuguese, he answered in English, making me feel even more like the American tourist I am.
Alentejo was worth it, though. We feasted for 15 Euros each on a three-course meal with wine, olives, and bread, surrounded by the intricately tiled interior of Casa do Alentejo, and left quite satisfied with our persistence.
We checked into the hotel and showered, and I changed into something a little less American – my Obama shirt. That evening we happened upon a Fado show in Chiado (called “Fado in Chiado”) that was tucked away on a side street in a theater far too large for the audience. I worried that the performance would be a bit sub-par in consideration of how few people turned up, but SB and I wanted to experience traditional Portuguese music, and Fado is about as traditional as Portuguese music gets, so we sat in the front and prepared ourselves for the possibility of fifty minutes of bad music. As it turned out, our worries were entirely unfounded – the four performers were amazing and the music was beautiful. At one point the male cantor asked if there were any Americans in the audience, and I proudly jumped up and down while SB shrunk further into her seat beside me.
We topped the night off with sopa de caldo verde and bachalhau com netas, traditional Portuguese food, before heading back up to the Chiado area for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. We finally fell into bed, exhausted, after formulating plans to head to Belém the next day.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Lend Me Your Hand
Last night we planned to have drinks with SB’s friend MD and her sister, CD. MD and SB have been close friends during their months in Valencia and were emotional about our departure to Lisbon. We agreed to meet after supper for goodbyes.
My sister and I spent the afternoon recovering from La Tomatina in the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias, a beautiful section of Valencia. It takes up a good portion of the river – did I mention that they drained the river a long time ago because it was flooding the city, and then decided to turn the riverbed into a park? – and was designed by a modern architect. The buildings are pristine whites surrounded by light blue reflecting pools and long bridges or terraces. To relax we walked around the shaded half and sipped tiny lemon slushies before retreating to the bar, located in the center of the white buildings and marked by white tables and chairs, and drank claras (half beer, half lemon Fanta).
CB sent us a message while we were at the bar to inform us that he had crazy stories about his time at the Tomatina, so we told him where we planned to eat supper and he joined us shortly before we met up with MD and CD. The five of us stood in the Plaza de la Reina while CB described his experience watching men try to climb to the top of a greased pole to retrieve a pig, which is actually how La Tomatina begins – no one can throw tomatoes until the pig is off the pole. When he started giving us a demonstration of how the men were trying to climb the pole, including his attempt to show us how one man tried to vertically leapfrog another on the pole, MD turned to us and asked, “How do you know this guy again?”
“He started talking to us at a tapas bar,” SB answered offhandedly.
MD laughed, but I nodded. “No, really,” I affirmed. She blinked and laughed again.
On Sunday night my sister and I were eating tapas at La Taberna de la Reina – actually, we were studying the tapas at La Taberna de la Reina and sipping white wine – when a guy beside us at the counter leaned over and said, “You take the tapas that you want, and then you leave the toothpicks on the plate and they count them when you’re done so they know how much to charge you.”
SB affected a surprised look and said, “Oh, that’s helpful!”
Since she’d been in Valencia for two months at that point, I was pretty sure she already knew how tapas worked. Having read the signs on the bar and menus, I, too, knew how tapas worked. I turned my back on the strange tapas informer, as I am of the opinion that people must earn my interest or respect in order to deserve my time, but SB eagerly asked, “Where are you from?”
I guess she missed hearing English.
“Canada,” he answered, and I knew we were in for trouble.
He introduced himself as CB and led us to ST, an Asian doctor in Australia who he met on the train to Valencia. “And now I’m sleeping on his floor Tuesday and Wednesday nights!” CB announced. ST laughed nervously.
Though I was wary of our new friends at first, I soon came to find them wildly entertaining – as did MD and CD after a few minutes. In fact, last night CB walked with SB and me to our cab, one sister on each arm, singing duets of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”.
We had an early night and planned to rise early for a quick final tour of the historic parts of the city I had not yet examined in detail. I dragged myself out of bed to run on the treadmill in the gym, which is cool enough to run in until about 8am on a cloudy day, and only came close to falling off once when I ran faster than the pace I’d set and ended up nearly impaling myself on the front handlebar. We made it around the Silk Exchange and the Central Market and ended up at the Cathedral, which boasts the Holy Grail.
This surprised me, as I had never been told that the Holy Grail was a) discovered or b) located in Valencia. However, we were intrigued enough to pay for an audio tour (unfortunately we forgot to get someone to take a picture of us looking ubertouristy) and walk around the inside of the Cathedral trying to avoid the other tourists staring at the ceiling and wandering in tune to their own audio guides.
The grail itself was a bit boring, but boy did we find something better: the Cathedral also houses the preserved arm of a saint. It’s behind bars and glass, which seems reasonable because I could picture myself trying to steal a saint’s preserved arm, and if I would do it you can bet others would too. When I first saw it I exclaimed, “Oh, cool!” loudly enough for several people to glare at me (this means they heard me over their audio guides, too, which does mean I may have been over-exclaiming a bit). I couldn’t help but wonder where the rest of him was. I know he was a martyr, but I don’t think he was dismembered, and if they had the arm preserved why not the rest of him? Why just the arm? Did he do something special with the arm? The audio guide was wildly lacking in information on this topic. They spent seventeen minutes talking about the two different pulpits and fewer than four on the SEVERED ARM OF A SAINT. Who made that decision?
Eventually we left the Cathedral and embarked on our embarking errands – returning Black Beauty, packing, laundry, etc – before jumping on the tram to the train station and catching our train to Madrid. Now begins Epic European Journey of the Sisters 2010 Part II: Portugal.
My sister and I spent the afternoon recovering from La Tomatina in the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias, a beautiful section of Valencia. It takes up a good portion of the river – did I mention that they drained the river a long time ago because it was flooding the city, and then decided to turn the riverbed into a park? – and was designed by a modern architect. The buildings are pristine whites surrounded by light blue reflecting pools and long bridges or terraces. To relax we walked around the shaded half and sipped tiny lemon slushies before retreating to the bar, located in the center of the white buildings and marked by white tables and chairs, and drank claras (half beer, half lemon Fanta).
CB sent us a message while we were at the bar to inform us that he had crazy stories about his time at the Tomatina, so we told him where we planned to eat supper and he joined us shortly before we met up with MD and CD. The five of us stood in the Plaza de la Reina while CB described his experience watching men try to climb to the top of a greased pole to retrieve a pig, which is actually how La Tomatina begins – no one can throw tomatoes until the pig is off the pole. When he started giving us a demonstration of how the men were trying to climb the pole, including his attempt to show us how one man tried to vertically leapfrog another on the pole, MD turned to us and asked, “How do you know this guy again?”
“He started talking to us at a tapas bar,” SB answered offhandedly.
MD laughed, but I nodded. “No, really,” I affirmed. She blinked and laughed again.
On Sunday night my sister and I were eating tapas at La Taberna de la Reina – actually, we were studying the tapas at La Taberna de la Reina and sipping white wine – when a guy beside us at the counter leaned over and said, “You take the tapas that you want, and then you leave the toothpicks on the plate and they count them when you’re done so they know how much to charge you.”
SB affected a surprised look and said, “Oh, that’s helpful!”
Since she’d been in Valencia for two months at that point, I was pretty sure she already knew how tapas worked. Having read the signs on the bar and menus, I, too, knew how tapas worked. I turned my back on the strange tapas informer, as I am of the opinion that people must earn my interest or respect in order to deserve my time, but SB eagerly asked, “Where are you from?”
I guess she missed hearing English.
“Canada,” he answered, and I knew we were in for trouble.
He introduced himself as CB and led us to ST, an Asian doctor in Australia who he met on the train to Valencia. “And now I’m sleeping on his floor Tuesday and Wednesday nights!” CB announced. ST laughed nervously.
Though I was wary of our new friends at first, I soon came to find them wildly entertaining – as did MD and CD after a few minutes. In fact, last night CB walked with SB and me to our cab, one sister on each arm, singing duets of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”.
We had an early night and planned to rise early for a quick final tour of the historic parts of the city I had not yet examined in detail. I dragged myself out of bed to run on the treadmill in the gym, which is cool enough to run in until about 8am on a cloudy day, and only came close to falling off once when I ran faster than the pace I’d set and ended up nearly impaling myself on the front handlebar. We made it around the Silk Exchange and the Central Market and ended up at the Cathedral, which boasts the Holy Grail.
This surprised me, as I had never been told that the Holy Grail was a) discovered or b) located in Valencia. However, we were intrigued enough to pay for an audio tour (unfortunately we forgot to get someone to take a picture of us looking ubertouristy) and walk around the inside of the Cathedral trying to avoid the other tourists staring at the ceiling and wandering in tune to their own audio guides.
The grail itself was a bit boring, but boy did we find something better: the Cathedral also houses the preserved arm of a saint. It’s behind bars and glass, which seems reasonable because I could picture myself trying to steal a saint’s preserved arm, and if I would do it you can bet others would too. When I first saw it I exclaimed, “Oh, cool!” loudly enough for several people to glare at me (this means they heard me over their audio guides, too, which does mean I may have been over-exclaiming a bit). I couldn’t help but wonder where the rest of him was. I know he was a martyr, but I don’t think he was dismembered, and if they had the arm preserved why not the rest of him? Why just the arm? Did he do something special with the arm? The audio guide was wildly lacking in information on this topic. They spent seventeen minutes talking about the two different pulpits and fewer than four on the SEVERED ARM OF A SAINT. Who made that decision?
Eventually we left the Cathedral and embarked on our embarking errands – returning Black Beauty, packing, laundry, etc – before jumping on the tram to the train station and catching our train to Madrid. Now begins Epic European Journey of the Sisters 2010 Part II: Portugal.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
La Tomatina
I survived La Tomatina.
La Tomatina is an annual festival held in the small town of Buñol a little outside of Valencia. During La Tomatina, which draws thousands of international tourists each each year, people crowd the tiny, windy streets of the town to hurl tomatoes at each other. It sounds less disgusting than it actually is.
I agreed to go about a month ago, thinking it would be kind of fun – we would throw a few tomatoes, watch other people throw tomatoes, no big deal. When I arrived in Valencia, however, and my sister informed me that we needed to buy cheap clothes we could throw away after the festival, I started to re-think my enthusiasm. “Why do we need to throw them away?” I asked.
“I hear the tomato juice never comes out. Oh, and we need goggles, because the acid burns your eyes.”
“Are you sure we want to go to this?”
“Have you seen the pictures online?” she asked hesitantly.
“No.” I opened my computer to Google them and she quickly shut it.
“Don’t,” she responded, and smiled. “I’ve been preparing for weeks now. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun!”
So yesterday we purchased ugly matching red-and-white striped dresses with badges that read “World Baby” (what does that even mean?), orange canvas shoes, and bright blue goggles for a total of about 12 Euros each, and this morning we woke up at 6:30 to get on an early bus to Buñol. I kept the fear at bay by laughing when someone told me to duck when the tomato fight began because some people don’t crush the tomatoes at the beginning and being hit by a full tomato can leave a big bruise. When someone else started talking about how the acid is good for your skin even though it stings, especially when you have to wait in the hot August sun for an hour before taking your turn in the public shower, I spotted another pair of girls in matching dresses and suggested to my sister that we take pictures with them.
At last we reached Buñol. The hours leading up to La Tomatina in Buñol are what I imagine a Spanish Jimmy Buffett concert would be like – the streets are full of drunk crazy people barely dressed in strange costumes (some guys had swords, which I still don’t understand). All along the sidewalks the people of Buñol set up stands selling sandwiches, sausages, paella, sangria, beer, and more goggles, and American popular music blares from hundreds of cars, radios, and open windows. SB and I brought 25 Euros between the two of us and within the first few minutes we spent five on a liter of sangria, which we later agreed was not necessarily the most prudent purchase but which went a long way to prepare me for the events to follow.
We met up with some Spanish friends who had spent the night partying in Buñol and they led us as close to the center of the fight as we could physically push ourselves. For about an hour we stood crushed by hundreds of other people as residents of the buildings next to us emptied buckets of water onto us from the windows above. A few people got sick and had to be carried out. Once or twice I was crushed so tightly by others that I couldn’t breathe in all the way, and every so often one of the guys behind me had to lift me up a little to make sure I didn’t get trampled. The men of Buñol rode past us on the tomato trucks and people began rushing to the center to get in the middle of La Tomatina.
I got hit by a few tomatoes and watched as one girl was taken away by medics after a tomato struck her straight in the eye (my goggles were firmly in place). Several other people were taken away by medics, too, who were barely distinguishable from the mass of tomato-covered bodies except by their whistles, which they blew incessantly as they pushed their way out of the crowds.
Eventually the tomatoes ran out and someone sounded a horn that signified the food fight was over. We were drenched and lucky enough to only be partially covered in tomato goop, so instead of waiting in line for the public showers we followed our Spanish friends to the river and jumped in.
Buñol is one of the most beautiful Spanish towns I have ever seen, and I wish I had been in a position to have a camera on me while I was there. From the river we could see the cliffs and the outer parts of the town walls climbing up and down them, and flowers spotted what otherwise might have been mistaken for a desert. All this was in extreme contrast to the rowdy group in the river, composed mostly of guys who delighted in trying to dunk or splash water on the rubia, or blonde girl (me).
When we emerged from the refreshingly cool river we scraped off our cheap dresses and shoes, both of which had shrunk significantly in the tomato juice and water, and pulled on shorts and t-shirts over our 3 Euro bikinis before trashing the dresses and shoes. Upon our return to Valencia we bought a doner kebap with all the toppings and ate it on our slow walk home in the blazing sun before showering and passing out.
Was it worth it? Yes. If you have never been and you have the chance, you should go to La Tomatina. But next time, I’m going to go for the party the night before and watch the crazy masses press themselves together to bathe in tomatoes. Then I’m going to take the train back to Valencia. And when I need acid to help my skin, I think I’ll try a spa.
La Tomatina is an annual festival held in the small town of Buñol a little outside of Valencia. During La Tomatina, which draws thousands of international tourists each each year, people crowd the tiny, windy streets of the town to hurl tomatoes at each other. It sounds less disgusting than it actually is.
I agreed to go about a month ago, thinking it would be kind of fun – we would throw a few tomatoes, watch other people throw tomatoes, no big deal. When I arrived in Valencia, however, and my sister informed me that we needed to buy cheap clothes we could throw away after the festival, I started to re-think my enthusiasm. “Why do we need to throw them away?” I asked.
“I hear the tomato juice never comes out. Oh, and we need goggles, because the acid burns your eyes.”
“Are you sure we want to go to this?”
“Have you seen the pictures online?” she asked hesitantly.
“No.” I opened my computer to Google them and she quickly shut it.
“Don’t,” she responded, and smiled. “I’ve been preparing for weeks now. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun!”
So yesterday we purchased ugly matching red-and-white striped dresses with badges that read “World Baby” (what does that even mean?), orange canvas shoes, and bright blue goggles for a total of about 12 Euros each, and this morning we woke up at 6:30 to get on an early bus to Buñol. I kept the fear at bay by laughing when someone told me to duck when the tomato fight began because some people don’t crush the tomatoes at the beginning and being hit by a full tomato can leave a big bruise. When someone else started talking about how the acid is good for your skin even though it stings, especially when you have to wait in the hot August sun for an hour before taking your turn in the public shower, I spotted another pair of girls in matching dresses and suggested to my sister that we take pictures with them.
At last we reached Buñol. The hours leading up to La Tomatina in Buñol are what I imagine a Spanish Jimmy Buffett concert would be like – the streets are full of drunk crazy people barely dressed in strange costumes (some guys had swords, which I still don’t understand). All along the sidewalks the people of Buñol set up stands selling sandwiches, sausages, paella, sangria, beer, and more goggles, and American popular music blares from hundreds of cars, radios, and open windows. SB and I brought 25 Euros between the two of us and within the first few minutes we spent five on a liter of sangria, which we later agreed was not necessarily the most prudent purchase but which went a long way to prepare me for the events to follow.
We met up with some Spanish friends who had spent the night partying in Buñol and they led us as close to the center of the fight as we could physically push ourselves. For about an hour we stood crushed by hundreds of other people as residents of the buildings next to us emptied buckets of water onto us from the windows above. A few people got sick and had to be carried out. Once or twice I was crushed so tightly by others that I couldn’t breathe in all the way, and every so often one of the guys behind me had to lift me up a little to make sure I didn’t get trampled. The men of Buñol rode past us on the tomato trucks and people began rushing to the center to get in the middle of La Tomatina.
I got hit by a few tomatoes and watched as one girl was taken away by medics after a tomato struck her straight in the eye (my goggles were firmly in place). Several other people were taken away by medics, too, who were barely distinguishable from the mass of tomato-covered bodies except by their whistles, which they blew incessantly as they pushed their way out of the crowds.
Eventually the tomatoes ran out and someone sounded a horn that signified the food fight was over. We were drenched and lucky enough to only be partially covered in tomato goop, so instead of waiting in line for the public showers we followed our Spanish friends to the river and jumped in.
Buñol is one of the most beautiful Spanish towns I have ever seen, and I wish I had been in a position to have a camera on me while I was there. From the river we could see the cliffs and the outer parts of the town walls climbing up and down them, and flowers spotted what otherwise might have been mistaken for a desert. All this was in extreme contrast to the rowdy group in the river, composed mostly of guys who delighted in trying to dunk or splash water on the rubia, or blonde girl (me).
When we emerged from the refreshingly cool river we scraped off our cheap dresses and shoes, both of which had shrunk significantly in the tomato juice and water, and pulled on shorts and t-shirts over our 3 Euro bikinis before trashing the dresses and shoes. Upon our return to Valencia we bought a doner kebap with all the toppings and ate it on our slow walk home in the blazing sun before showering and passing out.
Was it worth it? Yes. If you have never been and you have the chance, you should go to La Tomatina. But next time, I’m going to go for the party the night before and watch the crazy masses press themselves together to bathe in tomatoes. Then I’m going to take the train back to Valencia. And when I need acid to help my skin, I think I’ll try a spa.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Vanquished in Valencia
After three days spent traveling, eating paella and Spanish tortilla, and drinking sangria (it’s cheaper than water!), I told my sister we were going to get ourselves together and go for a run.
“But what about the beach?” she worried.
I figured the beach would still be there after we ran and that we could visit it then. She looked unconvinced. At last, when I had made it clear that I intended to run at least six miles today, we got on our bikes and she started leading me to the river.
The first thing I did when I woke up Sunday in Valencia was rent a bike. SB bought hers, a baby blue one named Sandra Dee, from a flea market, but afterward she learned that selling bikes at the flea market is actually illegal as said bikes are usually stolen. We thought it would be better for me to acquire a legal mode of transportation, so I met her at MegaBike in the Plaza de Aragon. The man working there presented me with a large black bike. At first I laughed because I thought he was making a clever and heretofore original joke about my height (or lack thereof), but quickly I realized he actually intended me to ride it. To prove to him that the bike was demasiado grande I hopped on and took a spin around the block.
The best thing about my rented bike is that when I sit on it I’m about twice as tall as I am in real life. The second best thing is that it has a big black basket on the front. The third best thing is that I don’t have to swing my leg over the seat to get on. The bad part is that the brakes are on the pedals and I keep forgetting that and come close to crashing into cars several times a day.
I want to name her “Black Beauty”, but so far no one else has liked it.
As we wheeled Black Beauty and Sandra Dee out of the garage, my sister reminded me, “It’s really hot outside today.” I laughed because I ran outside while at home in Augusta, were it was so hot and humid that before even doing anything my knees started sweating. Incidentally, though I actually did not realize that knees sweat until last week, mine have demonstrated their ability to do so multiple times in the past few days.
When the garage door opened we were blasted by a nuclear wind that almost blew me over. “We could turn around and forget this,” my sister suggested hopefully.
I thought about it but held strong. “We’ll feel better once we run,” I told her, and mounted Black Beauty. I was pretty sure even my hair was sweating, but I firmly believed that running was a good idea.
We started biking to the river. The first segment is in the sun. After about a mile SB said, “Last chance to pull over and just have a drink instead!”
I shook my head. If only I’d known the extent of my foolish pursuit then.
Once she realized running really was my plan, my sister switched tactics and began telling me how biking was good exercise and that I should just be glad we’d been doing that. “I’m going to run today,” I reiterated.
“Fine,” she finally said. “You run and I’ll try not to pass out.”
I laughed because I did not know she was serious.
After running a little under two miles I got cold. This is not a good sign when you know it’s hot outside. Then my vision blurred a little. I stopped right before I started seeing black spots. “I thought you were kidding about passing out,” I groaned to my sister.
“Not really,” she said.
I’ve been running between six and ten miles all summer, so once I got my vision back I was determined to run again. I got about another mile in before an Asian man stopped me and suggested I take a break because I looked pale. That was more embarrassing than having to walk before I completed two miles.
In the end I had to admit that my sister was right and we should not have tried to run. The only gratifying moment was during our bike ride back when we learned it was 42C – almost 108 Fahrenheit.
For the rest of the evening I made sure to tell everyone I had gone running when it was 42. Since no one with us was American, they were all very impressed.
“But what about the beach?” she worried.
I figured the beach would still be there after we ran and that we could visit it then. She looked unconvinced. At last, when I had made it clear that I intended to run at least six miles today, we got on our bikes and she started leading me to the river.
The first thing I did when I woke up Sunday in Valencia was rent a bike. SB bought hers, a baby blue one named Sandra Dee, from a flea market, but afterward she learned that selling bikes at the flea market is actually illegal as said bikes are usually stolen. We thought it would be better for me to acquire a legal mode of transportation, so I met her at MegaBike in the Plaza de Aragon. The man working there presented me with a large black bike. At first I laughed because I thought he was making a clever and heretofore original joke about my height (or lack thereof), but quickly I realized he actually intended me to ride it. To prove to him that the bike was demasiado grande I hopped on and took a spin around the block.
The best thing about my rented bike is that when I sit on it I’m about twice as tall as I am in real life. The second best thing is that it has a big black basket on the front. The third best thing is that I don’t have to swing my leg over the seat to get on. The bad part is that the brakes are on the pedals and I keep forgetting that and come close to crashing into cars several times a day.
I want to name her “Black Beauty”, but so far no one else has liked it.
As we wheeled Black Beauty and Sandra Dee out of the garage, my sister reminded me, “It’s really hot outside today.” I laughed because I ran outside while at home in Augusta, were it was so hot and humid that before even doing anything my knees started sweating. Incidentally, though I actually did not realize that knees sweat until last week, mine have demonstrated their ability to do so multiple times in the past few days.
When the garage door opened we were blasted by a nuclear wind that almost blew me over. “We could turn around and forget this,” my sister suggested hopefully.
I thought about it but held strong. “We’ll feel better once we run,” I told her, and mounted Black Beauty. I was pretty sure even my hair was sweating, but I firmly believed that running was a good idea.
We started biking to the river. The first segment is in the sun. After about a mile SB said, “Last chance to pull over and just have a drink instead!”
I shook my head. If only I’d known the extent of my foolish pursuit then.
Once she realized running really was my plan, my sister switched tactics and began telling me how biking was good exercise and that I should just be glad we’d been doing that. “I’m going to run today,” I reiterated.
“Fine,” she finally said. “You run and I’ll try not to pass out.”
I laughed because I did not know she was serious.
After running a little under two miles I got cold. This is not a good sign when you know it’s hot outside. Then my vision blurred a little. I stopped right before I started seeing black spots. “I thought you were kidding about passing out,” I groaned to my sister.
“Not really,” she said.
I’ve been running between six and ten miles all summer, so once I got my vision back I was determined to run again. I got about another mile in before an Asian man stopped me and suggested I take a break because I looked pale. That was more embarrassing than having to walk before I completed two miles.
In the end I had to admit that my sister was right and we should not have tried to run. The only gratifying moment was during our bike ride back when we learned it was 42C – almost 108 Fahrenheit.
For the rest of the evening I made sure to tell everyone I had gone running when it was 42. Since no one with us was American, they were all very impressed.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
On Spending Two Months Lost in Translation
In the week since I left Middlebury’s Portuguese Language School (or “Portuguese Camp”, as we liked to call it), people have asked me two questions:
1. “Are you, like, totally fluent in Portuguese now?”; and
2. “So don’t you, like, start law school in, like, two days or something?”
My acquaintances say “like” a lot.
It can be tough to follow my life (a solid euphemism for stalking) when I am not blogging. I considered blogging in Portuguese, but I decided that it would not vale a pena because most of the people I know do not, in fact, read Portuguese. Besides, when I was considering writing in Portuguese, everyone else in Portuguese Camp was preparing to go to Middlebury’s only bar. In the end it was a relatively easy decision.
Let me begin the recounting of my adventures over the past two months by answering the only two questions anyone’s asking. No, I am not totally fluent in Portuguese now. I do speak, read, understand, and write it significantly better, and it’s probable that a native speaker could communicate with me. When I’m in a posh coffee shop that thinks it’s totally mod to play Brazilian samba I understand the words (and sometimes accidentally write people emails in Portuguese). But I do not sound like I’m straight off the boat from Brazil*.
And I decided to defer law school for a year or so. I’m applying to grad school. I would go into details on this decision but I think it would make my friends in law school sad about their lives, which they kind of already are, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Frequently during my two months in Portuguese Camp I thought, someone should write a story about this. – Or a movie, or even a soap opera – perhaps a soap opera would be best. But how do you write about what gets lost in translation in one language? How can you possibly convey the trials and triumphs of speaking in a language that is NOT English while writing in English? As of today I still have no answer to this problem. In English, Portuguese Camp was somewhat dull. The town of Middlebury has basically one bar and the school has another. There were fifty of us, and we lived in two dorms and ate in the same small room of the same cafeteria every day**. We had class from 9am until 12:40pm, then lunch at 1:30 and sports all afternoon. After supper (7:30-8:30) we did homework for a little while and then went to one of the two bars.
You’d be surprised at how much more difficult – and how funny – life is when you cannot speak your native language, even to try to get definitions. If you’re in the cafeteria and wonder whether they will be bringing out more spoons, for example, but you find you can’t remember the word for “spoon”, you spend five minutes trying to play charades with someone until they say “colher” and by then your ice cream has melted and you have to throw it out and start over. And don’t even try to ask directions – it’s faster to wander until you find your way. Then when you arrive thirty minutes late you can try to figure out how to say, “I got lost!” – and remember you need to conjugate for the past tense.
We spent a lot of time playing sports or music, even those who weren’t that talented in either area. For example, I played tennis, where I displayed my talents for swinging myself in a circle while trying to hit the ball. I also played various percussion instruments in a band for reasons unknown, as percussion is really one of the few musical areas I’d never previously attempted.
On the last day, when we could speak English, everyone burst into hysterics at my every word. Apparently no one thought that a girl from Georgia would say “y’all” and “supper” or have any sort of Southern accent. This struck me as a serious oversight by my new friends, and I told them such, which made them laugh louder. “What’d y’all think I would sound like?” I wondered, but they were gasping for air and unable to respond.
I guess after two months of being constantly lost in translation I had glorified English. I’ll rephrase: I’ve spent my life glorifying English, the language, without any instances of significant disappointment; now I was glorifying communication in English. It seems I remembered people understanding me when I spoke English. This, in fact, has rarely been the case, which I admitted to myself only recently during this past week. This is especially true when I quote Heller or Vonnegut to gas station attendants.
During my drive home – yes, I drove to and from Vermont – I had a particularly interesting run-in with a gas station attendant. To put the event in perspective, I drove six hours on Friday (to New York City), slept six hours, drove seven hours on Saturday (to DC – usually it’s only four hours, but I’m popular with traffic), slept two hours, and then began driving at about 4am on Sunday. By 6am I was pulling over for coffee (I drank two trinta lattes from Starbucks – they added trinta while I was away!). By 7am I was falling asleep. Yes, after two trinta lattes. Actually, by 7am I had needed to pee for thirty minutes, but was worried that said need was the only reason I was still awake, and by 7am I no longer had a choice.
I pulled over at a gas station in rural Virginia and, as I feared, almost fell asleep standing up at the register after relieving myself. I stared at the gas station lady, thinking, “If I don’t do something fast I’m just going to sleep on this floor, and that’s dirty.” And there on the counter I saw it, a thing of late-night commercials on crappy channels: 5-hour energy.
Intrigued, I took a bottle and began reading. The first thing that caught my eye was the warning: Do not drink more than two bottles per day***. “Two bottles equals ten hours, but one only equals five, and I have to drive seven more,” I mused. “How many energy bottles do I need?”
“I’m not selling you more than one,” the gas station lady said warily.
I tried to make my eyes focus so I could glare at her, but in the end I just paid and ambled outside.
I’m going to say it now: 5-hour energy is both disgusting and effective. If you’re drowsy at work like the people on the commercials, it is NOT worth it. I almost threw up because it tasted so bad. (Instead a dunked the empty bottle into the trash can outside the gas station and cheered.) However, if you are falling asleep in rural Virginia with seven hours left to drive and you want to know what it feels like to think your skin is on fire, 5-hour energy is the way to go. It’s probably best that gas station lady did not sell me two, because I imagine that after the second my face would have melted off. As it was I think I listened to Hootie and the Blowfish for five hours straight, which is particularly impressive since I only own six of their songs.
The next time I stopped for gas I quoted Vonnegut to the attendant. I was singing “Hold My Hand” and she bubbled, “I love Hootie and the Blowfish, too!”
“Welcome to my granfalloon,” I responded.
She laughed, which I’ve noticed is something people do a lot when they don’t understand what’s going on.
Now I’m in Spain, and it’s refreshing to pretend that people don’t understand me because I speak Spanish poorly.
*Fascinatingly, Brazil is the only country that speaks Portuguese that would not require a boat (or, in these modern times, plane) trip to the United States. As I am no longer in the United States it is unclear whether the metaphor applies, particularly since a boat from Brazil would most likely arrive in Portugal rather than Spain.
**Well, this is mostly true. We discovered about a month in that another cafeteria had better food. We were required to eat with the program for lunch and supper, but by the last week most of us were eating breakfast at the better cafeteria. They usually had bacon.
***After the second bottle they recommend that you switch directly to Crystal Meth or Speed, depending on your income. Cocaine is discouraged as one really needs to snort excessive amounts to attain the same energy level as 5-hour energy.
1. “Are you, like, totally fluent in Portuguese now?”; and
2. “So don’t you, like, start law school in, like, two days or something?”
My acquaintances say “like” a lot.
It can be tough to follow my life (a solid euphemism for stalking) when I am not blogging. I considered blogging in Portuguese, but I decided that it would not vale a pena because most of the people I know do not, in fact, read Portuguese. Besides, when I was considering writing in Portuguese, everyone else in Portuguese Camp was preparing to go to Middlebury’s only bar. In the end it was a relatively easy decision.
Let me begin the recounting of my adventures over the past two months by answering the only two questions anyone’s asking. No, I am not totally fluent in Portuguese now. I do speak, read, understand, and write it significantly better, and it’s probable that a native speaker could communicate with me. When I’m in a posh coffee shop that thinks it’s totally mod to play Brazilian samba I understand the words (and sometimes accidentally write people emails in Portuguese). But I do not sound like I’m straight off the boat from Brazil*.
And I decided to defer law school for a year or so. I’m applying to grad school. I would go into details on this decision but I think it would make my friends in law school sad about their lives, which they kind of already are, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Frequently during my two months in Portuguese Camp I thought, someone should write a story about this. – Or a movie, or even a soap opera – perhaps a soap opera would be best. But how do you write about what gets lost in translation in one language? How can you possibly convey the trials and triumphs of speaking in a language that is NOT English while writing in English? As of today I still have no answer to this problem. In English, Portuguese Camp was somewhat dull. The town of Middlebury has basically one bar and the school has another. There were fifty of us, and we lived in two dorms and ate in the same small room of the same cafeteria every day**. We had class from 9am until 12:40pm, then lunch at 1:30 and sports all afternoon. After supper (7:30-8:30) we did homework for a little while and then went to one of the two bars.
You’d be surprised at how much more difficult – and how funny – life is when you cannot speak your native language, even to try to get definitions. If you’re in the cafeteria and wonder whether they will be bringing out more spoons, for example, but you find you can’t remember the word for “spoon”, you spend five minutes trying to play charades with someone until they say “colher” and by then your ice cream has melted and you have to throw it out and start over. And don’t even try to ask directions – it’s faster to wander until you find your way. Then when you arrive thirty minutes late you can try to figure out how to say, “I got lost!” – and remember you need to conjugate for the past tense.
We spent a lot of time playing sports or music, even those who weren’t that talented in either area. For example, I played tennis, where I displayed my talents for swinging myself in a circle while trying to hit the ball. I also played various percussion instruments in a band for reasons unknown, as percussion is really one of the few musical areas I’d never previously attempted.
On the last day, when we could speak English, everyone burst into hysterics at my every word. Apparently no one thought that a girl from Georgia would say “y’all” and “supper” or have any sort of Southern accent. This struck me as a serious oversight by my new friends, and I told them such, which made them laugh louder. “What’d y’all think I would sound like?” I wondered, but they were gasping for air and unable to respond.
I guess after two months of being constantly lost in translation I had glorified English. I’ll rephrase: I’ve spent my life glorifying English, the language, without any instances of significant disappointment; now I was glorifying communication in English. It seems I remembered people understanding me when I spoke English. This, in fact, has rarely been the case, which I admitted to myself only recently during this past week. This is especially true when I quote Heller or Vonnegut to gas station attendants.
During my drive home – yes, I drove to and from Vermont – I had a particularly interesting run-in with a gas station attendant. To put the event in perspective, I drove six hours on Friday (to New York City), slept six hours, drove seven hours on Saturday (to DC – usually it’s only four hours, but I’m popular with traffic), slept two hours, and then began driving at about 4am on Sunday. By 6am I was pulling over for coffee (I drank two trinta lattes from Starbucks – they added trinta while I was away!). By 7am I was falling asleep. Yes, after two trinta lattes. Actually, by 7am I had needed to pee for thirty minutes, but was worried that said need was the only reason I was still awake, and by 7am I no longer had a choice.
I pulled over at a gas station in rural Virginia and, as I feared, almost fell asleep standing up at the register after relieving myself. I stared at the gas station lady, thinking, “If I don’t do something fast I’m just going to sleep on this floor, and that’s dirty.” And there on the counter I saw it, a thing of late-night commercials on crappy channels: 5-hour energy.
Intrigued, I took a bottle and began reading. The first thing that caught my eye was the warning: Do not drink more than two bottles per day***. “Two bottles equals ten hours, but one only equals five, and I have to drive seven more,” I mused. “How many energy bottles do I need?”
“I’m not selling you more than one,” the gas station lady said warily.
I tried to make my eyes focus so I could glare at her, but in the end I just paid and ambled outside.
I’m going to say it now: 5-hour energy is both disgusting and effective. If you’re drowsy at work like the people on the commercials, it is NOT worth it. I almost threw up because it tasted so bad. (Instead a dunked the empty bottle into the trash can outside the gas station and cheered.) However, if you are falling asleep in rural Virginia with seven hours left to drive and you want to know what it feels like to think your skin is on fire, 5-hour energy is the way to go. It’s probably best that gas station lady did not sell me two, because I imagine that after the second my face would have melted off. As it was I think I listened to Hootie and the Blowfish for five hours straight, which is particularly impressive since I only own six of their songs.
The next time I stopped for gas I quoted Vonnegut to the attendant. I was singing “Hold My Hand” and she bubbled, “I love Hootie and the Blowfish, too!”
“Welcome to my granfalloon,” I responded.
She laughed, which I’ve noticed is something people do a lot when they don’t understand what’s going on.
Now I’m in Spain, and it’s refreshing to pretend that people don’t understand me because I speak Spanish poorly.
*Fascinatingly, Brazil is the only country that speaks Portuguese that would not require a boat (or, in these modern times, plane) trip to the United States. As I am no longer in the United States it is unclear whether the metaphor applies, particularly since a boat from Brazil would most likely arrive in Portugal rather than Spain.
**Well, this is mostly true. We discovered about a month in that another cafeteria had better food. We were required to eat with the program for lunch and supper, but by the last week most of us were eating breakfast at the better cafeteria. They usually had bacon.
***After the second bottle they recommend that you switch directly to Crystal Meth or Speed, depending on your income. Cocaine is discouraged as one really needs to snort excessive amounts to attain the same energy level as 5-hour energy.
The Trains in Spain
Yesterday, after a 2-month hiatus from English and traveling abroad, I hopped on Atlanta’s MARTA and dragged a hastily packed carry-on to the airport. My mother likes to remind me that I always believe I will have more time than I actually do and that I plan too many activities. I have to disagree. 4.5 days in Georgia was plenty of time to unpack from Middlebury, pack for this trip, pack for DC (oh yeah, because I will have fewer than 24 hours upon returning from Spain and Portugal before heading to the farm for Labor Day and then straight to my newest tenancy in our nation’s capitol), have meals with several non-family members (this I actually accomplished by reminding said members that “doing coffee” was cooler than lunch or supper), working part-time from afar for my new job, beginning the annual fall check-up rotation (ears and eyes, but that’s another story), studying for the GRE (that just didn’t happen until I got on the plane), and – HAHA, I almost forgot – PLANNING this trip.
Luckily my sister reminded me to plan the trip on Tuesday. In fact, I began this journey with a healthy lucky streak. I arrived at the airport two hours early, as mandated by TSA, got through security in 15 minutes, changed my dollars to Euros, and relaxed in the Delta Sky Club with a gin and tonic and yogurt covered pretzels* until the front desk calmly called my name over the appropriately gentle and non-crackly speakers**. I happily approached and gratefully thanked the desk agent upon learning that the gate agents hoped to speak with me, and I then descended easily in a clean and well-functioning elevator. Things were looking up.
At the gate I waited in line for a few minutes, which dampened my mood considerably as I really do not enjoy waiting at airport gates. There are always sick people and children with sticky fingers who smell like graham crackers and ride in minivans just dying to invade my personal space, which happens to require a roughly 5-foot radius. I also believe I should not be made to wait in lines generally, whether or not sick people/children are there, but that may be a less reasonable demand in an airport (or life).
The attractive transsexual gate agent took my passport and ticket and shook her (formerly his) head, saying, “I have some bad news for you.”
I had prepared for this for 23 hours, because when I checked in online I noticed a little red advisory noting that the flight was oversold and they would appreciate volunteers to take later flights. I am not the type of person who volunteers to take later flights, so I mostly ignored this advisory, filing it away in the back of my brain as “something that might go wrong”. I stared at my transsexual gate agent, trying to decide whether I could volunteer to change flights quickly enough to get the extra money before she told me I had been bumped to a later flight, but I got distracted by her incredibly long eyebrows. Suddenly she smiled. “We’re overbooked, so I’m going to have to upgrade you.”
All I could think to say was, “That isn’t bad news.”
You probably realized by now that my English, spoken and written, severely deteriorated with two months of disuse.
I sipped champagne and a glass of Riesling with my truffle and portabella ravioli while attempting to watch the beginning of “Date Night” (maybe it’d be good if you’re really drunk?), then gleefully drifted to sleep for several hours before a little GRE study session.
Unfortunately at this point my luck ran out. My plane landed in Spain almost half an hour late, causing me to miss the 11am train from Madrid to Valencia by three minutes. I think if I’d thought ahead and changed into a sports bra and shorts I might have made it, but my time was compromised by numerous flights of stairs unaccompanied by elevators or escalators, and my carry-on happens to be of the rolling variety. Next time I will consider investing in a me-sized backpack, which I think will make running up and down stairs quicker if not easier.
Oh, well, what the hell. Yossarian never dealt with this type of public transportation.
It is funny how persnickety the Spanish seem when I accidentally slip in Portuguese words. I found a cozy café in the train station and asked, “Cuanto cuesta para sentir-me?”
“Que?”
“Para sentir-me,” – I was trying to ask how much it cost to sit at the café, since it’s been my experience in Europe that frequently you have to pay to sit. I gestured toward the seating area. “Cuanto cuesta?”
“Sentar-se,” the man at the counter corrected me.
Okay – I get that it’s a different word if you change one letter. But if I worked at a coffee shop and some foreign kid walked up to me and asked how much it cost to set, I would not wonder whether he wanted to put tablecloths and utensils on my tables or simply sit at one of them.
Turns out it was free anyway, so I ordered a café con leche while they snickered at me. I wanted to be snooty and not leave a tip, but since no one leaves tips for a 1 Euro coffee in Spain I don’t think they got the slight.
*One of the awesomest snacks ever
**The Sky Club is why I travel
Luckily my sister reminded me to plan the trip on Tuesday. In fact, I began this journey with a healthy lucky streak. I arrived at the airport two hours early, as mandated by TSA, got through security in 15 minutes, changed my dollars to Euros, and relaxed in the Delta Sky Club with a gin and tonic and yogurt covered pretzels* until the front desk calmly called my name over the appropriately gentle and non-crackly speakers**. I happily approached and gratefully thanked the desk agent upon learning that the gate agents hoped to speak with me, and I then descended easily in a clean and well-functioning elevator. Things were looking up.
At the gate I waited in line for a few minutes, which dampened my mood considerably as I really do not enjoy waiting at airport gates. There are always sick people and children with sticky fingers who smell like graham crackers and ride in minivans just dying to invade my personal space, which happens to require a roughly 5-foot radius. I also believe I should not be made to wait in lines generally, whether or not sick people/children are there, but that may be a less reasonable demand in an airport (or life).
The attractive transsexual gate agent took my passport and ticket and shook her (formerly his) head, saying, “I have some bad news for you.”
I had prepared for this for 23 hours, because when I checked in online I noticed a little red advisory noting that the flight was oversold and they would appreciate volunteers to take later flights. I am not the type of person who volunteers to take later flights, so I mostly ignored this advisory, filing it away in the back of my brain as “something that might go wrong”. I stared at my transsexual gate agent, trying to decide whether I could volunteer to change flights quickly enough to get the extra money before she told me I had been bumped to a later flight, but I got distracted by her incredibly long eyebrows. Suddenly she smiled. “We’re overbooked, so I’m going to have to upgrade you.”
All I could think to say was, “That isn’t bad news.”
You probably realized by now that my English, spoken and written, severely deteriorated with two months of disuse.
I sipped champagne and a glass of Riesling with my truffle and portabella ravioli while attempting to watch the beginning of “Date Night” (maybe it’d be good if you’re really drunk?), then gleefully drifted to sleep for several hours before a little GRE study session.
Unfortunately at this point my luck ran out. My plane landed in Spain almost half an hour late, causing me to miss the 11am train from Madrid to Valencia by three minutes. I think if I’d thought ahead and changed into a sports bra and shorts I might have made it, but my time was compromised by numerous flights of stairs unaccompanied by elevators or escalators, and my carry-on happens to be of the rolling variety. Next time I will consider investing in a me-sized backpack, which I think will make running up and down stairs quicker if not easier.
Oh, well, what the hell. Yossarian never dealt with this type of public transportation.
It is funny how persnickety the Spanish seem when I accidentally slip in Portuguese words. I found a cozy café in the train station and asked, “Cuanto cuesta para sentir-me?”
“Que?”
“Para sentir-me,” – I was trying to ask how much it cost to sit at the café, since it’s been my experience in Europe that frequently you have to pay to sit. I gestured toward the seating area. “Cuanto cuesta?”
“Sentar-se,” the man at the counter corrected me.
Okay – I get that it’s a different word if you change one letter. But if I worked at a coffee shop and some foreign kid walked up to me and asked how much it cost to set, I would not wonder whether he wanted to put tablecloths and utensils on my tables or simply sit at one of them.
Turns out it was free anyway, so I ordered a café con leche while they snickered at me. I wanted to be snooty and not leave a tip, but since no one leaves tips for a 1 Euro coffee in Spain I don’t think they got the slight.
*One of the awesomest snacks ever
**The Sky Club is why I travel
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Good Thing About the Middle of Nowhere
Any time we told a local we were planning hikes they mentioned this tiny town on the other side of Glacier National Park called Polebridge, so yesterday we hopped in our white Chevy Traverse and started the drive. Montana R said it was about an hour and fifteen minutes.
About an hour and fifteen minutes after we started driving we came to a split in our dirt road and a sign that pointed to Canada one way and Glacier National Park the other way. After several moments of map consultation we determined Polebridge lay in the direction of Canada and gunned the Chevy north.
Eventually we reached Home Ranch Bottoms, a tiny store on the side of our dirt road that sold $2 beer and advertized free internet. It turned out Home Ranch Bottoms had no electricity, so I’m not sure how the free internet would have worked, but we chatted with the man working there and affirmed our motion was in the right direction before hopping back in the car yet again.
We bounced along our dirt road for fifteen more minutes before we reached Polebridge – not what I expected. Everyone told us about the amazing bakeries (note the plural) in Polebridge, so I imagined it to be one of those small towns with one central road that sported a few bakeries and some coffee houses.
In fact, Polebridge consists of a sign that says “Welcome to Polebridge”, the “Polebridge Mercantile” (the Merc), and a few cabins behind the Merc. There is not even a central street – the Merc sits beside the “highway”, aka the dirt road on which we drove in.
On the other hand, the cookies and breads at the Merc taste delightful. Upon returning to Whitefish I found myself recommending Polebridge’s “baked goods” (it sounded better in my mind than “single store that happens to produce awesome cookies and breads”). We stopped by the Merc after our hike, somewhat apprehensive, but knowing we could not leave Polebridge without at least trying one baked item. When we walked in a tray of cookies just out of the oven plopped on the counter in front of us and we received a paper plate with three on it, chocolate chips melting everywhere. I bake a lot of cookies but I have never made or tasted anything better than that Polebridge treat.
Our hike in Glacier National Park near Polebridge was uneventful. We ended up with less time than expected since it took us two hours to get there and we just trekked around Bowman Lake for a while, stopping to snack on granola or nectarines when we found a particularly beautiful spot. I took pictures every few steps and the Judge tried to help me with composition, the only part of photography I can really control with my current digital camera (it’s an awesome camera, just like Bruce is an awesome car, but as neither has a manual option you kind of just have to take what they decide upon). By my calculations we hiked about 8 miles on flat ground, but compared to the exertions of previous days it felt as if we’d barely exercised. That’s a weird feeling.
After Polebridge we cleaned up and made our way into Whitefish to meet BG and go to the farmer’s market. As the type of person who could spend every day at a farmer’s market I regretted “attending” one with SB and the Judge, who would rather spend an evening in a pub drinking Going to the Sun (their favorite Montana brew). I convinced them to hang around the market for long enough to purchase two baskets of cherry tomatoes and some huckleberry jam to send AW’s parents, then we retreated to the Black Star Brewing Company and stood on the balcony with our beers listening to the music from the market.
At times like that I think I could move to Montana, but the East in me always brings the wanderer to its senses.
About an hour and fifteen minutes after we started driving we came to a split in our dirt road and a sign that pointed to Canada one way and Glacier National Park the other way. After several moments of map consultation we determined Polebridge lay in the direction of Canada and gunned the Chevy north.
Eventually we reached Home Ranch Bottoms, a tiny store on the side of our dirt road that sold $2 beer and advertized free internet. It turned out Home Ranch Bottoms had no electricity, so I’m not sure how the free internet would have worked, but we chatted with the man working there and affirmed our motion was in the right direction before hopping back in the car yet again.
We bounced along our dirt road for fifteen more minutes before we reached Polebridge – not what I expected. Everyone told us about the amazing bakeries (note the plural) in Polebridge, so I imagined it to be one of those small towns with one central road that sported a few bakeries and some coffee houses.
In fact, Polebridge consists of a sign that says “Welcome to Polebridge”, the “Polebridge Mercantile” (the Merc), and a few cabins behind the Merc. There is not even a central street – the Merc sits beside the “highway”, aka the dirt road on which we drove in.
On the other hand, the cookies and breads at the Merc taste delightful. Upon returning to Whitefish I found myself recommending Polebridge’s “baked goods” (it sounded better in my mind than “single store that happens to produce awesome cookies and breads”). We stopped by the Merc after our hike, somewhat apprehensive, but knowing we could not leave Polebridge without at least trying one baked item. When we walked in a tray of cookies just out of the oven plopped on the counter in front of us and we received a paper plate with three on it, chocolate chips melting everywhere. I bake a lot of cookies but I have never made or tasted anything better than that Polebridge treat.
Our hike in Glacier National Park near Polebridge was uneventful. We ended up with less time than expected since it took us two hours to get there and we just trekked around Bowman Lake for a while, stopping to snack on granola or nectarines when we found a particularly beautiful spot. I took pictures every few steps and the Judge tried to help me with composition, the only part of photography I can really control with my current digital camera (it’s an awesome camera, just like Bruce is an awesome car, but as neither has a manual option you kind of just have to take what they decide upon). By my calculations we hiked about 8 miles on flat ground, but compared to the exertions of previous days it felt as if we’d barely exercised. That’s a weird feeling.
After Polebridge we cleaned up and made our way into Whitefish to meet BG and go to the farmer’s market. As the type of person who could spend every day at a farmer’s market I regretted “attending” one with SB and the Judge, who would rather spend an evening in a pub drinking Going to the Sun (their favorite Montana brew). I convinced them to hang around the market for long enough to purchase two baskets of cherry tomatoes and some huckleberry jam to send AW’s parents, then we retreated to the Black Star Brewing Company and stood on the balcony with our beers listening to the music from the market.
At times like that I think I could move to Montana, but the East in me always brings the wanderer to its senses.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Value of Experience
As it turns out biking up mountains in Montana all day exposes your newly muscled legs to more sun than one might expect, so SB and I both ended the day with funny red streaks down one side of the backs of our calves or on the other side of the tops of our thighs. This might have remained an issue for our vanity had we not already planned to go horseback riding the following day – an activity that requires rough jeans rubbing between your sunburned calf backs and the saddle. Since we were already hesitant to sit when unnecessary SB and I decided to down more than the recommended dose of Aspirin before heading out to the Bar W Guest Ranch.
The Judge stepped out of our rental at the ranch and immediately noticed that it smelled like horses. SB and I were less surprised than she seemed, which may be due in part to our extensive beginner experience with trail rides. Each of us attacks rural vacations with a determination to discover a trail ride, but neither of us have ever experienced more than the accidental trot of an excited horse. Impressively I am now at the experience level of “knowing to wear my torn jeans to ride horses because I will inevitably rip them in the crotch area when lunging up during the mount”. Yesterday when SB winced at the sound of my pants ripping I cheerfully said, “It’s okay, that’s why I wore these jeans!”
The Judge suggested I toss them before our return to Georgia so I wouldn’t have to carry useless jeans on the plane, but I knew better. I’m saving those babies for the next trail ride.
Our guide (Horse Lady J), who was shorter and younger than I, let the Judge choose which horse would go with which rider. I imagine Horse Lady J should have assigned us horses according to our experience level (I obviously demonstrated that I deserved the most difficult horse) but, like most people, was too intimidated by the Judge to cross her. The Judge gave SB the tallest horse, a white-gray gentle character named Cayoose (sp? – Blackfoot for “horse”). She took Ike, the shortest and plumpest, for herself, and I was left with Kernel.
Kernel (the Judge kept confusing his name with Colonel and occasionally accidentally referred to him as “General”) was a troublemaker from the start, which I enjoyed thoroughly. For the first mile he kept trying to snatch bites of the leaf buffet and sneezed in consternation when I pulled him back. I think he was used to riders who paid less attention to their rides. Kernel also liked to follow so closely behind Ike that he once ended up sneezing in earnest when horse poop dropped right past his nose. I laughed at him for that a little and he glared at me but then started paying attention to me when I asked him politely to stay back.
Cayoose remained relatively calm but Ike sensed the Judge’s lack of comfort with horses and pranced around more than necessary. It didn’t help that the Judge occasionally removed a foot from the stirrup and propped it up on Ike’s neck. Kernel and I giggled when Ike took such opportunities to snack or trot, and the Judge would hear us and holler, “What are you saying to the General?”
We rode mostly through the woods and the trip really turned out to be a great success, and when I dismounted for good I told Kernel I’d come back to ride him again, at which point he sneezed on me. I think that was his way of saying he’d miss me.
After the mandatory beer run on the drive home we changed and headed back toward Whitefish to hike around what the locals call “Big Mountain” and the guidebooks label “Whitefish Mountain”. It doesn’t open to bikers or zipliners until June 26 this year and the Summit is closed still because of snow, so we made like mountain goats and just hopped around various trails and commented on how weird ski mountains look without snow. Rain and fog cloaked the mountains in the distance and threatened our sense of dryness so we weren’t too disappointed that the peak was closed and once we felt exercised we quickly grew bored of Big Mountain. The Judge declared it half past beer time and we trekked down to Great Northern for a reward.
Today we’re heading back to Glacier via Polebridge, apparently renowned for its fantastic bakeries. Our driving route consists mostly of a dirt road marked by a dashed line on our map and occasionally the Judge and SB stop to argue about whether we’re going the right way or whether Ted Turner owns the ranch were passing. We just drove by a sign that advertised $2 beer and internet at the Home Ranch Bottoms, so SB is pulling in. Polebridge seems a distant goal.
The Judge stepped out of our rental at the ranch and immediately noticed that it smelled like horses. SB and I were less surprised than she seemed, which may be due in part to our extensive beginner experience with trail rides. Each of us attacks rural vacations with a determination to discover a trail ride, but neither of us have ever experienced more than the accidental trot of an excited horse. Impressively I am now at the experience level of “knowing to wear my torn jeans to ride horses because I will inevitably rip them in the crotch area when lunging up during the mount”. Yesterday when SB winced at the sound of my pants ripping I cheerfully said, “It’s okay, that’s why I wore these jeans!”
The Judge suggested I toss them before our return to Georgia so I wouldn’t have to carry useless jeans on the plane, but I knew better. I’m saving those babies for the next trail ride.
Our guide (Horse Lady J), who was shorter and younger than I, let the Judge choose which horse would go with which rider. I imagine Horse Lady J should have assigned us horses according to our experience level (I obviously demonstrated that I deserved the most difficult horse) but, like most people, was too intimidated by the Judge to cross her. The Judge gave SB the tallest horse, a white-gray gentle character named Cayoose (sp? – Blackfoot for “horse”). She took Ike, the shortest and plumpest, for herself, and I was left with Kernel.
Kernel (the Judge kept confusing his name with Colonel and occasionally accidentally referred to him as “General”) was a troublemaker from the start, which I enjoyed thoroughly. For the first mile he kept trying to snatch bites of the leaf buffet and sneezed in consternation when I pulled him back. I think he was used to riders who paid less attention to their rides. Kernel also liked to follow so closely behind Ike that he once ended up sneezing in earnest when horse poop dropped right past his nose. I laughed at him for that a little and he glared at me but then started paying attention to me when I asked him politely to stay back.
Cayoose remained relatively calm but Ike sensed the Judge’s lack of comfort with horses and pranced around more than necessary. It didn’t help that the Judge occasionally removed a foot from the stirrup and propped it up on Ike’s neck. Kernel and I giggled when Ike took such opportunities to snack or trot, and the Judge would hear us and holler, “What are you saying to the General?”
We rode mostly through the woods and the trip really turned out to be a great success, and when I dismounted for good I told Kernel I’d come back to ride him again, at which point he sneezed on me. I think that was his way of saying he’d miss me.
After the mandatory beer run on the drive home we changed and headed back toward Whitefish to hike around what the locals call “Big Mountain” and the guidebooks label “Whitefish Mountain”. It doesn’t open to bikers or zipliners until June 26 this year and the Summit is closed still because of snow, so we made like mountain goats and just hopped around various trails and commented on how weird ski mountains look without snow. Rain and fog cloaked the mountains in the distance and threatened our sense of dryness so we weren’t too disappointed that the peak was closed and once we felt exercised we quickly grew bored of Big Mountain. The Judge declared it half past beer time and we trekked down to Great Northern for a reward.
Today we’re heading back to Glacier via Polebridge, apparently renowned for its fantastic bakeries. Our driving route consists mostly of a dirt road marked by a dashed line on our map and occasionally the Judge and SB stop to argue about whether we’re going the right way or whether Ted Turner owns the ranch were passing. We just drove by a sign that advertised $2 beer and internet at the Home Ranch Bottoms, so SB is pulling in. Polebridge seems a distant goal.
One More Mishap
So Going to the Sun road is how I earned my first cycling shirt. It’s yellow and blue and green and says “Going to the Sun” on the front and “Glacier Cyclery: Glacier National Park” on the back. Technically I’m sharing it and another with the Judge, but I think the “Going to the Sun” one is cooler so I’m thinking of it as mine.
As I noted yesterday we peeled back layers as we ascended the mountain. At the top we piled them on again before starting down, and I made sure to zip two of my shirts pretty high so my chest wouldn’t have the cold wind rushing against it. Apparently this was a good plan but not well enough executed, because when we were almost at the bottom a big black bug flew into the shirts.
At first I thought I could just leave it alone and let it find its own way out. I’d opted for a sports bra and there wasn’t much moving around space inside my shirt so I figured the bug would quickly realize he was in hostile territory and leave. I did not account for the fact that when bugs with stingers decide they’re in hostile territory they begin stinging.
I slammed on the brakes and skidded over to the side of the road, where I started stripping off one layer after another and screaming, “Help! Get it out! Help!”
SB was too far down the mountain ahead of us to hear but the Judge stopped her bike and started running up toward me. My various shirts – I must have worn seven or eight – dropped around me and passing cyclists came close to crashing as they tried to figure out what the crazy lady pulling shirts off over her helmet and screaming had in mind. Finally I got down to just my short-sleeved long underwear layer and the Judge helped me flush the thing out through the bottom of my bra.
I sustained two stings to the left breast.
Here’s the good thing about my cycling shirt: it zips all the way up to the neck and all the way down to the waist.
As I noted yesterday we peeled back layers as we ascended the mountain. At the top we piled them on again before starting down, and I made sure to zip two of my shirts pretty high so my chest wouldn’t have the cold wind rushing against it. Apparently this was a good plan but not well enough executed, because when we were almost at the bottom a big black bug flew into the shirts.
At first I thought I could just leave it alone and let it find its own way out. I’d opted for a sports bra and there wasn’t much moving around space inside my shirt so I figured the bug would quickly realize he was in hostile territory and leave. I did not account for the fact that when bugs with stingers decide they’re in hostile territory they begin stinging.
I slammed on the brakes and skidded over to the side of the road, where I started stripping off one layer after another and screaming, “Help! Get it out! Help!”
SB was too far down the mountain ahead of us to hear but the Judge stopped her bike and started running up toward me. My various shirts – I must have worn seven or eight – dropped around me and passing cyclists came close to crashing as they tried to figure out what the crazy lady pulling shirts off over her helmet and screaming had in mind. Finally I got down to just my short-sleeved long underwear layer and the Judge helped me flush the thing out through the bottom of my bra.
I sustained two stings to the left breast.
Here’s the good thing about my cycling shirt: it zips all the way up to the neck and all the way down to the waist.
Monday, June 14, 2010
How I Earned My Cycling Shirt
When we told the folks at Glacier Cyclery that we planned to bike through parts of Glacier National Park later this week they shook their heads gravely and noted that due to construction we could only bike on the weekends. Though our derrières hurt every time we tried to sit from a 25-miler around Whitefish Lake (on less-than-comfortable seats, I might add), we looked at each other and made the decision to bike on both weekend days. Glacier Cyclery employees recommended Going to the Sun road, a 50-mile highway closed to traffic for most of the year due to snow (the West is less efficient than the East). Going to the Sun road, they said, was due to open to cars next weekend, and although there was construction that would stop us from riding about a mile from the peak at Logan’s Pass they still suggested it. We could go about sixteen miles up and sixteen miles back.
“Where’s the worst uphill part?” my sister asked.
They laughed at us. Eventually one of them said, “Well, when you reach The Loop you’re halfway up the mountain, and then you can see how far you have left to go, and you think, ‘Oh, God, I’m never going to make it.’ That’s probably the worst part, but with sixteen miles of uphill it’s really hard to say.”
When SB and I were around nine and ten the Judge took us on a 14-mile ride up the Blue Ridge Parkway, so we rolled our eyes at the obviously inferior hardcore-ness of the bike guys and loaded our three bikes into the back of our rented Chevy Traverse. (Unfortunately the bike rack Montana R lent us – or any bike rack, according to the Glacier Cyclery crew – would not fit on the back of the Chevy and so our only transportation option was to remove the front wheels and jam the bikes in the SUV. It took some work and some lessons on how to remove a front wheel for SB but in the end it saved us from having to buy a bike lock.)
I guess we should have been more intimidated by the bike boys’ reactions, but all I can say is that if any of us had known what we were in for when we drove through the West entrance of Glacier National Park we would have turned the car around – or at least turned our bikes around at the halfway point. However, we were too stupid to pay attention and too naïve to know what we were in for, so we happily bounced through the park until we reached the gate that closed off Going to the Sun road to cars and then used SB’s new skills to reassemble the bikes. The car thermometer read about 43˚F at 9:30am. We kept on our sweatpants and hurried to attach our bag to SB’s bike, which had a small rack over the back wheel, with clumsy gloved hands, hoping we wouldn’t freeze at the top.
A note on the bag: after riding around on Saturday without a good way to carry extra sunscreen, snacks, keys, phones, layers, etc, we decided to find a nice lightweight backpack for the rest of our trip. We ended up at a store called “The Sportsman and Ski Haus”, which boasted numerous bags – but none felt quite light enough or rolled up small enough to fit into our bags for the plane ride home. The salesman helping us – a burly sportsman who probably spent his spare time hunting on skis – tentatively suggested we look at fanny packs. I laughed in his face.
We spent a bit of time speaking with the cycle guys at The Sportsman, too, and SB and the Judge kept returning to the fanny pack idea. To quell this notion, I announced that I refused to carry or be seen with a fanny pack unless it was a camouflage fanny pack.
Later SB asked me, “Did you say that because you saw a camo fanny pack?”
No. I thought of camo because to get from bags to cycles we’d passed through the hunting section, and I thought surely no one would manufacture a camo fanny pack.
SB and the Judge promptly found a camo fanny pack, and it turns out the thing had the added bonus of costing only $9.99. To my shock and dismay we purchased it and SB and the Judge chatted the entire ride home about how they could fill it up with little baggies of granola and bananas for our Going to the Sun road excursion. I’m glaring at the bag now as it sits across me on the table. Somehow it simultaneously screams masculinity and yet emasculates even such unisex objects as that table.
Anyway, we packed the camo back with granola baggies and Craisin packets and M&Ms and cookies (rewards for reaching the top) and shed our sweatpants, hoping we would warm up during the ride. If the Glacier Cyclery guys were reading this they would laugh out loud at that last sentiment.
We reached The Loop and took our first food break. The entire way up we’d been dazzled by the scenery and even came across a mule deer that calmly crossed the road in front of us. We were exhausted but pretty sure we could make it halfway more, and by The Loop we’d shed most of our outer layers. We chatted with some veterans who said they biked the road every weekend starting in April and liked to see how much further the road was open to bikes each week. They said we would be able to make it almost to the top, about sixteen miles up, which corroborated the bike boys’ opinions. Encouraged, we turned the corner and saw how much further we had to ride.
I almost choked at what lay ahead, but we kept going.
The difficult part of the ride turned out to be not the incline but the lack of any relief whatsoever. For sixteen miles we never even pedaled on flat land; the entire road unrelentingly continued to slope up and up. Occasionally we encountered steep sections after which we stopped to catch our breath, but most of the time we just slowly pushed ourselves up a peak in the Rockies.
When it seemed as if we’d gone at least halfway more we took a break to get our bearings and rest. We realized we hadn’t even reached a major landmark, the Weeping Wall, after which the peak languished three miles ahead; we figured due to construction we’d have about a mile after the Weeping Wall. That calculation turned out to be correct, but we still had no clue how far away from the Weeping Wall we rested. Figuring we had to be close, we got back on the bikes – my own backside was so sore that I had avoided sitting down on my bike so far because amazingly standing and pedaling hurt less than the relief of sitting – and kept going up.
Eventually the Judge just said, “Uncle.”
We pulled over to the side again and I took more pictures – I took so many pictures yesterday that my camera ran out of battery. We almost turned around, but SB was determined to get as far as we could, so we kept going again.
I don’t know how many more times after that we stopped and restarted, but I was almost convinced that we weren’t going to make it when we reached the Weeping Wall. I recently ran a half marathon and most days spend an hour biking in addition to my runs, but my legs felt like Jell-o. I thought we were done for.
Once we passed the Weeping Wall, where we unavoidably showered in glacial streams, the road turned rough and the railings disappeared. I refused to look over the side of the mountain for certainty of vertigo. A mile later we reached signs that announced further travel ensured persecution. I have never been happier for the threat of persecution.
We celebrated with cookies and more pictures and took our time back down the mountain, pausing for mountain goat sightings and a more cookie celebration. When we reached home we realized we’d been sunburned in strange cycling shorts patterns, but it was hard to care.
We barely made it to Pescado Blanco for a delicious Mexican supper and passed out upon returning home. Now we’re on our way out the door for horseback riding. I hope our rear ends survive.
“Where’s the worst uphill part?” my sister asked.
They laughed at us. Eventually one of them said, “Well, when you reach The Loop you’re halfway up the mountain, and then you can see how far you have left to go, and you think, ‘Oh, God, I’m never going to make it.’ That’s probably the worst part, but with sixteen miles of uphill it’s really hard to say.”
When SB and I were around nine and ten the Judge took us on a 14-mile ride up the Blue Ridge Parkway, so we rolled our eyes at the obviously inferior hardcore-ness of the bike guys and loaded our three bikes into the back of our rented Chevy Traverse. (Unfortunately the bike rack Montana R lent us – or any bike rack, according to the Glacier Cyclery crew – would not fit on the back of the Chevy and so our only transportation option was to remove the front wheels and jam the bikes in the SUV. It took some work and some lessons on how to remove a front wheel for SB but in the end it saved us from having to buy a bike lock.)
I guess we should have been more intimidated by the bike boys’ reactions, but all I can say is that if any of us had known what we were in for when we drove through the West entrance of Glacier National Park we would have turned the car around – or at least turned our bikes around at the halfway point. However, we were too stupid to pay attention and too naïve to know what we were in for, so we happily bounced through the park until we reached the gate that closed off Going to the Sun road to cars and then used SB’s new skills to reassemble the bikes. The car thermometer read about 43˚F at 9:30am. We kept on our sweatpants and hurried to attach our bag to SB’s bike, which had a small rack over the back wheel, with clumsy gloved hands, hoping we wouldn’t freeze at the top.
A note on the bag: after riding around on Saturday without a good way to carry extra sunscreen, snacks, keys, phones, layers, etc, we decided to find a nice lightweight backpack for the rest of our trip. We ended up at a store called “The Sportsman and Ski Haus”, which boasted numerous bags – but none felt quite light enough or rolled up small enough to fit into our bags for the plane ride home. The salesman helping us – a burly sportsman who probably spent his spare time hunting on skis – tentatively suggested we look at fanny packs. I laughed in his face.
We spent a bit of time speaking with the cycle guys at The Sportsman, too, and SB and the Judge kept returning to the fanny pack idea. To quell this notion, I announced that I refused to carry or be seen with a fanny pack unless it was a camouflage fanny pack.
Later SB asked me, “Did you say that because you saw a camo fanny pack?”
No. I thought of camo because to get from bags to cycles we’d passed through the hunting section, and I thought surely no one would manufacture a camo fanny pack.
SB and the Judge promptly found a camo fanny pack, and it turns out the thing had the added bonus of costing only $9.99. To my shock and dismay we purchased it and SB and the Judge chatted the entire ride home about how they could fill it up with little baggies of granola and bananas for our Going to the Sun road excursion. I’m glaring at the bag now as it sits across me on the table. Somehow it simultaneously screams masculinity and yet emasculates even such unisex objects as that table.
Anyway, we packed the camo back with granola baggies and Craisin packets and M&Ms and cookies (rewards for reaching the top) and shed our sweatpants, hoping we would warm up during the ride. If the Glacier Cyclery guys were reading this they would laugh out loud at that last sentiment.
We reached The Loop and took our first food break. The entire way up we’d been dazzled by the scenery and even came across a mule deer that calmly crossed the road in front of us. We were exhausted but pretty sure we could make it halfway more, and by The Loop we’d shed most of our outer layers. We chatted with some veterans who said they biked the road every weekend starting in April and liked to see how much further the road was open to bikes each week. They said we would be able to make it almost to the top, about sixteen miles up, which corroborated the bike boys’ opinions. Encouraged, we turned the corner and saw how much further we had to ride.
I almost choked at what lay ahead, but we kept going.
The difficult part of the ride turned out to be not the incline but the lack of any relief whatsoever. For sixteen miles we never even pedaled on flat land; the entire road unrelentingly continued to slope up and up. Occasionally we encountered steep sections after which we stopped to catch our breath, but most of the time we just slowly pushed ourselves up a peak in the Rockies.
When it seemed as if we’d gone at least halfway more we took a break to get our bearings and rest. We realized we hadn’t even reached a major landmark, the Weeping Wall, after which the peak languished three miles ahead; we figured due to construction we’d have about a mile after the Weeping Wall. That calculation turned out to be correct, but we still had no clue how far away from the Weeping Wall we rested. Figuring we had to be close, we got back on the bikes – my own backside was so sore that I had avoided sitting down on my bike so far because amazingly standing and pedaling hurt less than the relief of sitting – and kept going up.
Eventually the Judge just said, “Uncle.”
We pulled over to the side again and I took more pictures – I took so many pictures yesterday that my camera ran out of battery. We almost turned around, but SB was determined to get as far as we could, so we kept going again.
I don’t know how many more times after that we stopped and restarted, but I was almost convinced that we weren’t going to make it when we reached the Weeping Wall. I recently ran a half marathon and most days spend an hour biking in addition to my runs, but my legs felt like Jell-o. I thought we were done for.
Once we passed the Weeping Wall, where we unavoidably showered in glacial streams, the road turned rough and the railings disappeared. I refused to look over the side of the mountain for certainty of vertigo. A mile later we reached signs that announced further travel ensured persecution. I have never been happier for the threat of persecution.
We celebrated with cookies and more pictures and took our time back down the mountain, pausing for mountain goat sightings and a more cookie celebration. When we reached home we realized we’d been sunburned in strange cycling shorts patterns, but it was hard to care.
We barely made it to Pescado Blanco for a delicious Mexican supper and passed out upon returning home. Now we’re on our way out the door for horseback riding. I hope our rear ends survive.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Cycloops
Montana facilitates my pursuit of hardcore-ness. I just built a crazy huge fire on which I shall, immediately following this blog post, cook a steak until it turns dark purple and only moos a little. It helped my image that I did this while wearing hiking boots and long underwear (which was short-sleeved, so technically I have to wonder if it qualifies as short underwear).
Our journey began early yesterday morning – at 6am for me and 4am for the Judge and SB, who drove to Atlanta before our 8:30am flight. Yesterday morning was probably the first time I felt lucky in only needing to ride MARTA to reach the airport.
Two flights and another car ride later, through all of which SB slept, we arrived in a tiny section of Whitefish, Montana. A little background information on Whitefish: it lies an hour south of Canada and functions as a resort town in the winter and the month of July (their summer). When my sister told her high school roommate, who happens to hail from Montana herself, that we planned to vacation in Whitefish, she asked, “Why?”
Interestingly, most Whitefish residents also ask us “Why Whitefish?” in the first three sentences of any conversation. This includes, but is not limited to: bartenders, guys working at cycling stores, bakery owners, little girls walking through town with their father, the pharmacist at Walgreen’s where we stopped to pick up an emergency inhaler for SB, and random people who run after us when we exit one outdoor adventure store to convince us to visit theirs.
Montana R happened to run after us as we left a cycling-store-slash-coffee-shop. I stopped because a huge black dog bounded after him and I think if my personality had a sign it would read, “Will brake for dogs”. Montana R insisted we follow him into his fly-fishing store, and since the dog went I did too, and since I went the Judge and SB did three.
We don’t fly-fish, but the store was notably cool and Montana R proved full of helpful advice about local watering holes and bike routes. In what I’ve come to learn is true Montana kindness, upon learning that we might want to take our newly-rented bikes up to Glacier National Park tomorrow, Montana R immediately offered to loan us his bike rack.
Of course we refused, because in the East, even in the South, people don’t just do that. Montana R insisted, though, adding that he would meet us at The Great Northern Brewing Company in a few hours and buy us a beer.
We’d been in Whitefish for only two hours.
At around 7:30 we met Montana R at Great Northern and plopped down around a bar table with the loaned bike rack on the booth beside us. He and another friend pulled out maps and I jotted down notes on their suggestions for how and where to hike and bike Glacier. Eventually we stumbled on weary legs to a quick supper and drove back to our cabin in the woods in 20-hour-day-inflicted somnambulant silence. Montana R left a message concerning his disappointment that SB and I did not return to Great Northern for pool and more drinks.
Montana is like a mix between camp and the movie “A River Runs Through It”. This morning we climbed out of bed early and outfitted ourselves for a day of biking (the Judge refused to let me bring my long-time helmet because it happens to be duct-taped together, and SB decided to purchase a pair of biking shorts) before taking off on a 25-mile trail around Whitefish Lake. At home we usually ride bikes with big, cushiony seats, and all evening we’ve been taking care to sit down gently. Tomorrow we plan to ride 30 miles to one of the more famous peaks in Glacier. I foresee a necessity for serious use of the resort hot tub tomorrow evening – I’ll just stand in the middle of it.
Our journey began early yesterday morning – at 6am for me and 4am for the Judge and SB, who drove to Atlanta before our 8:30am flight. Yesterday morning was probably the first time I felt lucky in only needing to ride MARTA to reach the airport.
Two flights and another car ride later, through all of which SB slept, we arrived in a tiny section of Whitefish, Montana. A little background information on Whitefish: it lies an hour south of Canada and functions as a resort town in the winter and the month of July (their summer). When my sister told her high school roommate, who happens to hail from Montana herself, that we planned to vacation in Whitefish, she asked, “Why?”
Interestingly, most Whitefish residents also ask us “Why Whitefish?” in the first three sentences of any conversation. This includes, but is not limited to: bartenders, guys working at cycling stores, bakery owners, little girls walking through town with their father, the pharmacist at Walgreen’s where we stopped to pick up an emergency inhaler for SB, and random people who run after us when we exit one outdoor adventure store to convince us to visit theirs.
Montana R happened to run after us as we left a cycling-store-slash-coffee-shop. I stopped because a huge black dog bounded after him and I think if my personality had a sign it would read, “Will brake for dogs”. Montana R insisted we follow him into his fly-fishing store, and since the dog went I did too, and since I went the Judge and SB did three.
We don’t fly-fish, but the store was notably cool and Montana R proved full of helpful advice about local watering holes and bike routes. In what I’ve come to learn is true Montana kindness, upon learning that we might want to take our newly-rented bikes up to Glacier National Park tomorrow, Montana R immediately offered to loan us his bike rack.
Of course we refused, because in the East, even in the South, people don’t just do that. Montana R insisted, though, adding that he would meet us at The Great Northern Brewing Company in a few hours and buy us a beer.
We’d been in Whitefish for only two hours.
At around 7:30 we met Montana R at Great Northern and plopped down around a bar table with the loaned bike rack on the booth beside us. He and another friend pulled out maps and I jotted down notes on their suggestions for how and where to hike and bike Glacier. Eventually we stumbled on weary legs to a quick supper and drove back to our cabin in the woods in 20-hour-day-inflicted somnambulant silence. Montana R left a message concerning his disappointment that SB and I did not return to Great Northern for pool and more drinks.
Montana is like a mix between camp and the movie “A River Runs Through It”. This morning we climbed out of bed early and outfitted ourselves for a day of biking (the Judge refused to let me bring my long-time helmet because it happens to be duct-taped together, and SB decided to purchase a pair of biking shorts) before taking off on a 25-mile trail around Whitefish Lake. At home we usually ride bikes with big, cushiony seats, and all evening we’ve been taking care to sit down gently. Tomorrow we plan to ride 30 miles to one of the more famous peaks in Glacier. I foresee a necessity for serious use of the resort hot tub tomorrow evening – I’ll just stand in the middle of it.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Love Divine
I experienced Graduation and Anniversary Weekend at St. Paul’s School for the first time in the spring of 2002 as a third former (or, as the rest of the world calls it, a high-school freshman). Third formers at SPS work as waiters and busboys during Saturday’s picnic lunch and I remember watching while alumni streamed into the white tents set up on the chapel lawn, looking as happy as I’d ever seen a group of old men. I also remember not being particularly surprised, partially because I was young enough not to realize that returning to your high school for a reunion every year was not practiced widely but also because I had lived at St. Paul’s for nine months and already suspected I would want to come back as often as possible once I graduated.
Over the past five years I learned through other friends and pop culture movies that high school reunions usually take place in the form of a dance with a disco ball in high school gyms, and that the main purpose of said reunions is to prove to your old classmates that you have either become better than they ever were or that you are still as awesome as you were in high school. While I will admit that this past weekend I witnessed certain ex-hockey players clinging to their awesome factor from SPS days, for the most part I looked forward to seeing my high school classmates. We lived together for four years – each one of us always struggling at one thing or another, each of us helping others through their own particular difficulties. Hockey players and chess club champions crowded around the same couches in the library after practice at night to get help conjugating Spanish verbs from artists, and everyone knew that while they excelled in one arena (or even three or four) they still needed help to stay afloat in all the others. Cliques existed, of course, because in any larger group of people they will – wanting to surround oneself with like individuals is natural – but SPS cliques never seemed exclusive to me, simply formed loosely because musicians spent all their spare time in the music building and ultimate Frisbee players spent theirs on the lawn. In a weird reverse of the norm, we all made fun of the “dumb” kids – ones who, for example, entered high school without already knowing algebra. In retrospect this seems crueler than the usual school environment, of which we were all products, where the smart dorky kids get taunted. Five years later I’m realizing that it really isn’t fair for smart kids to gang up on dumb ones in high school, because on the whole the smart kids do end up getting the better end of the deal.
Anyway – I’ll get back to waxing interestingly. SPS Graduation/Anniversary Weekend consists of a whirlwind of activities planned for the alumni, beginning on Friday afternoon at around 1pm with registration and ending on Sunday afternoon with graduation. Like any elite prep school we have a Latin play, a 5K, a chapel service/alumni meeting, a parade, and a bevy of reunion meals. Saturday morning I arrived on campus early enough for the 10am chapel service but not quite early enough for the 8am run, which was due in part to the excitement of the night before, during which two members of my form managed to mar their records with arrests for drunk and disorderly. The alumni relations committee relegated us to the Red Roof Inn in Loudon, New Hampshire, twenty minutes away from SPS, because the form of 2004 caused such a ruckus last year that no one else wanted to take the 5th-year reuniters. We complained quite a bit on Friday evening, but by around 2am it became clear that the alumni relations committee had in fact made an excellent decision in our exile.
In chapel we sang the school hymns and recited the school prayer. When I attended St. Paul’s I hated the day of the year during which we sat in our hard wooden assigned pews and waited as the names of alumni who passed away during the wars were read out; during my first alumni chapel I learned that the names of all alumni who passed away during the previous year were read. I tried to settle in uncomfortably, preparing myself for a time of great boredom and wishing I were outside wandering our 2,000 acres the way I used to whenever I had a big project or paper due. When we were in deaths from the form of 1934 (they’re read chronologically by form), I began thinking about the tradition of reading the names of the dead. At SPS I’d always thought of them floating up into the rafters like ghost bats, unable to really let go of the world until their names echoed through the chapel. Sometimes after the memorial services I would have nightmares about dead alumni drifting around campus, and they always looked a little like the men I saw from the form of 1929 this past weekend, only a little more translucent. I got so spooked from my overactive imagination that I became convinced that I’d read these ideas in an Edgar Allen Poe story and spent my fifth-form winter re-reading all his works to find the image. After Saturday morning’s service I met BG out on the chapel terrace and we sat quietly on the wall looking over the pond. Eventually she said, “I know this is vaguely Mormon, but reading out the names of the dead – I know you think it’s creepy,” (BG was my roommate at SPS for three years and witnessed my nightmares and the Poe period), “but isn’t it a little reassuring to know that after you die someone will still be speaking your name in our chapel?”
And it is, in a strange way. I have spent much of my life feeling slightly out of place. At SPS I found myself surrounded by others like me because they were unlike most people, which may be a confusing distinction to anyone normal. We all grew up trying to figure out how many questions we should answer incorrectly to walk the line between pleasing our parents, who knew how smart we were, and not intimidating the other kids in the class, who would make fun of us if they knew how smart we were. We left home at fourteen and entered a world where the coolest of us knew every country in the world or had already finished calculus by sixteen, but more importantly, we entered a world where all of our possible friends had battled that precarious situation of being different and trying not to. St. Paul’s is a day’s journey from where I grew up, but in some ways it feels more like home than I imagine anywhere else ever could. It is a little Mormon, but I like the creepy idea that some extended family of outsider dorks will hear my name read out when I die.
After the chapel service we lined up to parade through campus with the form of 2010 at the very end, and when we reached the edge of campus we all lined the road and applauded as 2010ers walked through. I didn’t know anyone graduating but I remembered well how it felt to be a day away from graduating SPS and have all the alumni cheering you on, and I have to say it was pretty fun to see all those 18-year-olds grinning and feeling important.
BG and I made our way through lunch, photographs, crew races, and a lobster/steak dinner, trying to suppress being overwhelmed. We hung out with our good friend TL much of the day and at some point as he spoke with someone else I noticed that his maroon-colored collared shirt in fact displayed the Arby’s logo. When he sat back down we asked him about it, and he said, “I got tired of people asking me if I was employed, so this seemed like a good idea.”
That was two days ago and it’s still making me laugh a little.
Yesterday and today I’ve done the bus/plane/shuttle/metro/loose your luggage and argue with Delta about having it delivered before you leave Atlanta, then at 6:15 tell them to just keep it in the airport because you’re going to pick it up before you leave Atlanta, then reaching the airport and having it on the delivery van dance. All the way I’ve had our school hymn, “Love Divine”, stuck in my head. Two lines suggest that I “Suddenly return and never, Never more Thy temples leave”.
Though I yearn to follow those instructions, I fear I will only do so when it’s my name they’re reading in the chapel.
Over the past five years I learned through other friends and pop culture movies that high school reunions usually take place in the form of a dance with a disco ball in high school gyms, and that the main purpose of said reunions is to prove to your old classmates that you have either become better than they ever were or that you are still as awesome as you were in high school. While I will admit that this past weekend I witnessed certain ex-hockey players clinging to their awesome factor from SPS days, for the most part I looked forward to seeing my high school classmates. We lived together for four years – each one of us always struggling at one thing or another, each of us helping others through their own particular difficulties. Hockey players and chess club champions crowded around the same couches in the library after practice at night to get help conjugating Spanish verbs from artists, and everyone knew that while they excelled in one arena (or even three or four) they still needed help to stay afloat in all the others. Cliques existed, of course, because in any larger group of people they will – wanting to surround oneself with like individuals is natural – but SPS cliques never seemed exclusive to me, simply formed loosely because musicians spent all their spare time in the music building and ultimate Frisbee players spent theirs on the lawn. In a weird reverse of the norm, we all made fun of the “dumb” kids – ones who, for example, entered high school without already knowing algebra. In retrospect this seems crueler than the usual school environment, of which we were all products, where the smart dorky kids get taunted. Five years later I’m realizing that it really isn’t fair for smart kids to gang up on dumb ones in high school, because on the whole the smart kids do end up getting the better end of the deal.
Anyway – I’ll get back to waxing interestingly. SPS Graduation/Anniversary Weekend consists of a whirlwind of activities planned for the alumni, beginning on Friday afternoon at around 1pm with registration and ending on Sunday afternoon with graduation. Like any elite prep school we have a Latin play, a 5K, a chapel service/alumni meeting, a parade, and a bevy of reunion meals. Saturday morning I arrived on campus early enough for the 10am chapel service but not quite early enough for the 8am run, which was due in part to the excitement of the night before, during which two members of my form managed to mar their records with arrests for drunk and disorderly. The alumni relations committee relegated us to the Red Roof Inn in Loudon, New Hampshire, twenty minutes away from SPS, because the form of 2004 caused such a ruckus last year that no one else wanted to take the 5th-year reuniters. We complained quite a bit on Friday evening, but by around 2am it became clear that the alumni relations committee had in fact made an excellent decision in our exile.
In chapel we sang the school hymns and recited the school prayer. When I attended St. Paul’s I hated the day of the year during which we sat in our hard wooden assigned pews and waited as the names of alumni who passed away during the wars were read out; during my first alumni chapel I learned that the names of all alumni who passed away during the previous year were read. I tried to settle in uncomfortably, preparing myself for a time of great boredom and wishing I were outside wandering our 2,000 acres the way I used to whenever I had a big project or paper due. When we were in deaths from the form of 1934 (they’re read chronologically by form), I began thinking about the tradition of reading the names of the dead. At SPS I’d always thought of them floating up into the rafters like ghost bats, unable to really let go of the world until their names echoed through the chapel. Sometimes after the memorial services I would have nightmares about dead alumni drifting around campus, and they always looked a little like the men I saw from the form of 1929 this past weekend, only a little more translucent. I got so spooked from my overactive imagination that I became convinced that I’d read these ideas in an Edgar Allen Poe story and spent my fifth-form winter re-reading all his works to find the image. After Saturday morning’s service I met BG out on the chapel terrace and we sat quietly on the wall looking over the pond. Eventually she said, “I know this is vaguely Mormon, but reading out the names of the dead – I know you think it’s creepy,” (BG was my roommate at SPS for three years and witnessed my nightmares and the Poe period), “but isn’t it a little reassuring to know that after you die someone will still be speaking your name in our chapel?”
And it is, in a strange way. I have spent much of my life feeling slightly out of place. At SPS I found myself surrounded by others like me because they were unlike most people, which may be a confusing distinction to anyone normal. We all grew up trying to figure out how many questions we should answer incorrectly to walk the line between pleasing our parents, who knew how smart we were, and not intimidating the other kids in the class, who would make fun of us if they knew how smart we were. We left home at fourteen and entered a world where the coolest of us knew every country in the world or had already finished calculus by sixteen, but more importantly, we entered a world where all of our possible friends had battled that precarious situation of being different and trying not to. St. Paul’s is a day’s journey from where I grew up, but in some ways it feels more like home than I imagine anywhere else ever could. It is a little Mormon, but I like the creepy idea that some extended family of outsider dorks will hear my name read out when I die.
After the chapel service we lined up to parade through campus with the form of 2010 at the very end, and when we reached the edge of campus we all lined the road and applauded as 2010ers walked through. I didn’t know anyone graduating but I remembered well how it felt to be a day away from graduating SPS and have all the alumni cheering you on, and I have to say it was pretty fun to see all those 18-year-olds grinning and feeling important.
BG and I made our way through lunch, photographs, crew races, and a lobster/steak dinner, trying to suppress being overwhelmed. We hung out with our good friend TL much of the day and at some point as he spoke with someone else I noticed that his maroon-colored collared shirt in fact displayed the Arby’s logo. When he sat back down we asked him about it, and he said, “I got tired of people asking me if I was employed, so this seemed like a good idea.”
That was two days ago and it’s still making me laugh a little.
Yesterday and today I’ve done the bus/plane/shuttle/metro/loose your luggage and argue with Delta about having it delivered before you leave Atlanta, then at 6:15 tell them to just keep it in the airport because you’re going to pick it up before you leave Atlanta, then reaching the airport and having it on the delivery van dance. All the way I’ve had our school hymn, “Love Divine”, stuck in my head. Two lines suggest that I “Suddenly return and never, Never more Thy temples leave”.
Though I yearn to follow those instructions, I fear I will only do so when it’s my name they’re reading in the chapel.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
I'd Like to Check You for Ticks
On the first morning of my first camping trip I found a tick latched to the center of my throat.
We'd already had an eventful morning. In the early hours, when the rain began, we awoke briefly to wish we'd had the foresight to place a tarp over the cooler-and-portable-stovetop-on-picnic-table that AW called "the kitchen". Then, at around 6am, AW began screaming, "What the hell are you doing in here? How'd you get in here?" (imagine variations and much more colorful cuss words).
BG and I squinted at each other and unzipped one of our tent window flaps to see AW's tart shaking. We guessed he was throwing things at the tent door. "Get out of here!" he kept shrieking.
It turns out a squirrel broke through his tent barriers and thought it might be fun to hang out. BG and I made a few puns at AW's expense, dubbed the squirrel "Genghis" because it went through his wall to terrorize him, and rolled over to go back to sleep.
I discovered the tick (as of yet unnamed) after I put my contacts in a few hours later. It glared back at me from its station on the middle of my throat and dug in a bit deeper as I watched it. I was alone, so I can't confirm whether I lost consciousness from pure horror, but eventually I found BG and through a series of gestures and moans intimated the issue at hand (or neck). Concerned, she led (carried?) me back to camp, where we found AW cooking bacon and pancakes in the rain. I maintained a vague hunger despite the sick feeling brought on by any thought of the tick I hosted and when I smelled the frying pork I momentarily envied my guest for the ability to continuously feast. He cackled at me and sucked more of my blood, relishing my suffering.
I clawed open my jacket and choked out, "There's a tick on my neck, get it off!"
AW tried to hold me down for tick removal as I thrashed and screamed. At one point he asked BG to take over cooking. I strayed in and out of conscious thought for those few seconds, mostly imagining the gush of blood that would surely pour forth from my giant throat wound once the tick was gone.
After AW removed the tick and crushed it with his nails I grabbed at my neck to staunch the bleeding. Once I realized there was no blood (probably because the tick already sucked it all out of me), I zipped my jacket snugly back up and snatched some bacon, commenting, "I think I handled that pretty well."
"You were calmer than I'd have expected," BG agreed.
With the exception of certainly contracting Lyme disease I fared well on my first camping trip. This is due almost entirely to AW's superb planning skills and camping equipment. BG and I met on the bus from Boston to Concord, NH on Tuesday evening, where AW picked us up from the bus station. The three of us enjoyed a quiet evening at The Common Man, where I ate one of four lobsters in an eight-day period, and spent the night with AW's parents so we could load up and move out early Wednesday.
At home I drive a dark green Toyota Forerunner whom I affectionately named "Bruce" after Bruce Banner - the Hulk's human personality. AW's family, on the other hand, owns The Hulk. He is a dark green F-250 Super Duty Pickup and easily held all our supplies and food. I hopped in the back seat of the cab on Wednesday morning and settled in for our drive, hoping Bruce would not be jealous. He hasn't spoken to me since.
On Wednesday afternoon we reached our island in Maine and I learned how to set up camp. Luckily my brilliant sister advised me to pack a hat and gloves, which I happily donned as AW built a campfire. We hiked along the edge of the ocean and marveled at the sky, filled with ash from the forest fires in Canada. When it rained AW taught us Gripe Rummy, and my skill level has developed to a point at which I wonder that I shouldn't turn pro. Due to a lack of cell phone or internet reception, though, I cannot adequately research the presence or lack thereof of Gripe Rummy in the professional cards arena.
Thursday night we decided to boil lobsters (#3 of the 4 per 8 days). Unfortunately, we dawdled longer than expected at our Fort Popham outing, where we spent the early afternoon climbing through ruins and watching herons and Main fishermen, and we arrived at the little lobster shed too late. We scrambled wildly to another store and reached it in time to find the owner throwing sticks into the ocean for his Golden Retriever off the lobster dock. AW explained our situation while I took over the Golden's entertainment and the old man unlocked his doors so we could choose our lobsters. Later by the campfire I talked about wanting a dog until AW and BG got fed up and let me play with the lobsters until the water boiled. I tried to make them fight over a carrot, but they just glared at me and crawled on top of each other.
I complained that the lobsters weren't as fun as dogs and BG remarked, "Better than a neck tick, though."
I imagine I'll camp again.
We'd already had an eventful morning. In the early hours, when the rain began, we awoke briefly to wish we'd had the foresight to place a tarp over the cooler-and-portable-stovetop-on-picnic-table that AW called "the kitchen". Then, at around 6am, AW began screaming, "What the hell are you doing in here? How'd you get in here?" (imagine variations and much more colorful cuss words).
BG and I squinted at each other and unzipped one of our tent window flaps to see AW's tart shaking. We guessed he was throwing things at the tent door. "Get out of here!" he kept shrieking.
It turns out a squirrel broke through his tent barriers and thought it might be fun to hang out. BG and I made a few puns at AW's expense, dubbed the squirrel "Genghis" because it went through his wall to terrorize him, and rolled over to go back to sleep.
I discovered the tick (as of yet unnamed) after I put my contacts in a few hours later. It glared back at me from its station on the middle of my throat and dug in a bit deeper as I watched it. I was alone, so I can't confirm whether I lost consciousness from pure horror, but eventually I found BG and through a series of gestures and moans intimated the issue at hand (or neck). Concerned, she led (carried?) me back to camp, where we found AW cooking bacon and pancakes in the rain. I maintained a vague hunger despite the sick feeling brought on by any thought of the tick I hosted and when I smelled the frying pork I momentarily envied my guest for the ability to continuously feast. He cackled at me and sucked more of my blood, relishing my suffering.
I clawed open my jacket and choked out, "There's a tick on my neck, get it off!"
AW tried to hold me down for tick removal as I thrashed and screamed. At one point he asked BG to take over cooking. I strayed in and out of conscious thought for those few seconds, mostly imagining the gush of blood that would surely pour forth from my giant throat wound once the tick was gone.
After AW removed the tick and crushed it with his nails I grabbed at my neck to staunch the bleeding. Once I realized there was no blood (probably because the tick already sucked it all out of me), I zipped my jacket snugly back up and snatched some bacon, commenting, "I think I handled that pretty well."
"You were calmer than I'd have expected," BG agreed.
With the exception of certainly contracting Lyme disease I fared well on my first camping trip. This is due almost entirely to AW's superb planning skills and camping equipment. BG and I met on the bus from Boston to Concord, NH on Tuesday evening, where AW picked us up from the bus station. The three of us enjoyed a quiet evening at The Common Man, where I ate one of four lobsters in an eight-day period, and spent the night with AW's parents so we could load up and move out early Wednesday.
At home I drive a dark green Toyota Forerunner whom I affectionately named "Bruce" after Bruce Banner - the Hulk's human personality. AW's family, on the other hand, owns The Hulk. He is a dark green F-250 Super Duty Pickup and easily held all our supplies and food. I hopped in the back seat of the cab on Wednesday morning and settled in for our drive, hoping Bruce would not be jealous. He hasn't spoken to me since.
On Wednesday afternoon we reached our island in Maine and I learned how to set up camp. Luckily my brilliant sister advised me to pack a hat and gloves, which I happily donned as AW built a campfire. We hiked along the edge of the ocean and marveled at the sky, filled with ash from the forest fires in Canada. When it rained AW taught us Gripe Rummy, and my skill level has developed to a point at which I wonder that I shouldn't turn pro. Due to a lack of cell phone or internet reception, though, I cannot adequately research the presence or lack thereof of Gripe Rummy in the professional cards arena.
Thursday night we decided to boil lobsters (#3 of the 4 per 8 days). Unfortunately, we dawdled longer than expected at our Fort Popham outing, where we spent the early afternoon climbing through ruins and watching herons and Main fishermen, and we arrived at the little lobster shed too late. We scrambled wildly to another store and reached it in time to find the owner throwing sticks into the ocean for his Golden Retriever off the lobster dock. AW explained our situation while I took over the Golden's entertainment and the old man unlocked his doors so we could choose our lobsters. Later by the campfire I talked about wanting a dog until AW and BG got fed up and let me play with the lobsters until the water boiled. I tried to make them fight over a carrot, but they just glared at me and crawled on top of each other.
I complained that the lobsters weren't as fun as dogs and BG remarked, "Better than a neck tick, though."
I imagine I'll camp again.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Between Weekends in New England
After narrowly avoiding travel disasters my family split up back at Hartsfield in Atlanta for a few hours, resolving to meet again at the farm. Incredibly this plan resulted in all of us meeting again at the farm.
I spent most of the formative time of my youth at “the farm” – fields of Christmas trees (also known secularly as “Frazer Firs”) perched precariously on the sides of a mountain in North Carolina. Over the past fifteen years my family has slowly acquired most of the top of the mountain and transformed the farm into something like a country fortress, penetrated only by our meth-making neighbors. They occasionally drop by to steal a laptop or sometimes to overfish the pond. Recently they’ve been a bit more distant, which is probably because Daddy bought some guns and taught us how to cock a shotgun to scare off hillbillies.
Scattered torrential downpours marked the weekend, so I settled in to catch up on my emails, reading, studying, and blogging. Somehow I managed to neglect these duties and instead spent most of Sunday, after realizing our Blu-Ray player had the capability to connect to a Wi-Fi network, setting up the Blu-Ray to our Wi-Fi and trying to enable Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Note my use of the phrase “most of Sunday” – our internet at the farm is tenuous at best and I do not have a reputation for dabbling in electronics. However, I did eventually set up these services and ended the day feeling more or less fulfilled.
On the topic of Wi-Fi: I’m actually writing this on a plane. …A plane with Wi-Fi. It’s called “GoGo” and its motto is, “The sky is no longer the limit”. I think that’s pretty clever, and I typically disdain mottos.
Memorial Day (that was yesterday, for those of you who don’t keep track) dawned slightly less rainy and we all hurried to don our exercise clothes and work in a quick run. SB and I tackled about three miles on the same route and returned to the house to find Daddy on his way out.
I should note that my father does not hurry as effectively as we do.
A bit later, after SB showered and I read a few books and wrote a dissertation, Daddy made it out the door. By this time the clouds looked somewhat ominous again and we encouraged him to exercise care while exercising. We thought this was wildly funny and witty.
The Judge returned a few minutes before the rain begin. It drizzled a while, then turned torrential again, and we sat on the front porch swing with the dog and watched the driveway for Daddy to reappear.
It was an hour or so before we began to worry. This may seem like a delayed reaction, but as I noted earlier, Daddy moves slowly. SB also posited the opinion that he could have elected to walk back up to the house to avoid getting the inside of his car wet. Daddy’s car is named “Fluffy” and he likes it to stay very clean. None of us found SB’s suggestion unreasonable.
Eventually the Judge and SB elected me to drive down to the pond and see if Daddy needed some help. By this point Mom had reached a level of concern and worry that turned annoying to those around her (“He really should have been back by now. I hope he didn’t fall. He should have at least called. Do you think he had his phone with him? I’m worried.” Duh.); I took my escape for what it was and headed down to check on Daddy.
Two minutes down the driveway (oh yeah, it’s a long driveway) SB called to let me know that Daddy had checked in (guess he had his phone) and had driven into town to get gas once it started to rain. He saw this as a perfectly normal course of action and did not understand why Mom had seen fit to alert the media of his apparent disappearance.
I asked SB if that meant I had to come back, and she snarled, “Don’t even think about leaving me alone with them.”
To their credit: my parents are awesome. They’re probably the coolest parents that exist and they actually hold their own as real people, too. Daddy cooks delicious apple pie and pancakes and buys Blu-Ray players; Mom teaches us the names of every plant on the farm and buys tractors. I imagine they maintain some level of coolness in the workplace as well, since they have lots of parties. However, they are also part of my family, and as I have established, members of my family make each other into lunatics.
Interestingly, my sister seems less affected by this, which leads credence to my childhood attempts to convince her that she was adopted.
Currently my airplane (on which I confirmed my seat three times after Friday’s fiasco) rockets over some part of the East Coast, carrying me to New Hampshire for a week of camping in Maine and SPS Anniversary Weekend. It’s so nice to be in a position where I miss my family again.
I spent most of the formative time of my youth at “the farm” – fields of Christmas trees (also known secularly as “Frazer Firs”) perched precariously on the sides of a mountain in North Carolina. Over the past fifteen years my family has slowly acquired most of the top of the mountain and transformed the farm into something like a country fortress, penetrated only by our meth-making neighbors. They occasionally drop by to steal a laptop or sometimes to overfish the pond. Recently they’ve been a bit more distant, which is probably because Daddy bought some guns and taught us how to cock a shotgun to scare off hillbillies.
Scattered torrential downpours marked the weekend, so I settled in to catch up on my emails, reading, studying, and blogging. Somehow I managed to neglect these duties and instead spent most of Sunday, after realizing our Blu-Ray player had the capability to connect to a Wi-Fi network, setting up the Blu-Ray to our Wi-Fi and trying to enable Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Note my use of the phrase “most of Sunday” – our internet at the farm is tenuous at best and I do not have a reputation for dabbling in electronics. However, I did eventually set up these services and ended the day feeling more or less fulfilled.
On the topic of Wi-Fi: I’m actually writing this on a plane. …A plane with Wi-Fi. It’s called “GoGo” and its motto is, “The sky is no longer the limit”. I think that’s pretty clever, and I typically disdain mottos.
Memorial Day (that was yesterday, for those of you who don’t keep track) dawned slightly less rainy and we all hurried to don our exercise clothes and work in a quick run. SB and I tackled about three miles on the same route and returned to the house to find Daddy on his way out.
I should note that my father does not hurry as effectively as we do.
A bit later, after SB showered and I read a few books and wrote a dissertation, Daddy made it out the door. By this time the clouds looked somewhat ominous again and we encouraged him to exercise care while exercising. We thought this was wildly funny and witty.
The Judge returned a few minutes before the rain begin. It drizzled a while, then turned torrential again, and we sat on the front porch swing with the dog and watched the driveway for Daddy to reappear.
It was an hour or so before we began to worry. This may seem like a delayed reaction, but as I noted earlier, Daddy moves slowly. SB also posited the opinion that he could have elected to walk back up to the house to avoid getting the inside of his car wet. Daddy’s car is named “Fluffy” and he likes it to stay very clean. None of us found SB’s suggestion unreasonable.
Eventually the Judge and SB elected me to drive down to the pond and see if Daddy needed some help. By this point Mom had reached a level of concern and worry that turned annoying to those around her (“He really should have been back by now. I hope he didn’t fall. He should have at least called. Do you think he had his phone with him? I’m worried.” Duh.); I took my escape for what it was and headed down to check on Daddy.
Two minutes down the driveway (oh yeah, it’s a long driveway) SB called to let me know that Daddy had checked in (guess he had his phone) and had driven into town to get gas once it started to rain. He saw this as a perfectly normal course of action and did not understand why Mom had seen fit to alert the media of his apparent disappearance.
I asked SB if that meant I had to come back, and she snarled, “Don’t even think about leaving me alone with them.”
To their credit: my parents are awesome. They’re probably the coolest parents that exist and they actually hold their own as real people, too. Daddy cooks delicious apple pie and pancakes and buys Blu-Ray players; Mom teaches us the names of every plant on the farm and buys tractors. I imagine they maintain some level of coolness in the workplace as well, since they have lots of parties. However, they are also part of my family, and as I have established, members of my family make each other into lunatics.
Interestingly, my sister seems less affected by this, which leads credence to my childhood attempts to convince her that she was adopted.
Currently my airplane (on which I confirmed my seat three times after Friday’s fiasco) rockets over some part of the East Coast, carrying me to New Hampshire for a week of camping in Maine and SPS Anniversary Weekend. It’s so nice to be in a position where I miss my family again.
Ticket to Ride?
My sister the Harvard graduate cannot speak English. This confirms my suspicions that American schools have no respect for the sanctity or preservation of our native language. At the risk of sounding like I live or belong in Arizona, though, I suppose I shall desist from any suggestion of a law requiring correct English grammar upon high school graduation.
I digress.
My sister the Harvard graduate has many amazing qualities. However, she possesses neither a grasp of English grammar (this includes simple verb conjugations; she composes sentences like, “I drunk that beer”) nor the wherewithal to juggle travel plans. Usually this is not an issue since someone in my family takes care of it for her.
Usually that person is me.
Due to my travel-happy summer plans, I booked my tickets for Harvard graduation separately from the rest of my family and left them to their own devices. I thought it might be a good exercise in reality for them.
Unfortunately I was wrong. On Friday at 11pm, after a long day of moving SB out of her dorm, my father went to print our boarding passes in the hotel’s business center and discovered that no one ever booked a flight for my sister.
At first I assumed Delta had made some mistake. “Just pull up the confirmation Daddy emailed you after he booked it,” I said. When Daddy interjected that his business manager booked the tickets, I revised my statement only slightly.
“What confirmation?” SB asked.
“Surely you asked for someone to email you your flight information,” I answered, suddenly unsure.
Perhaps by now you have guessed that the oversight was not, in fact, Delta’s. The next morning all four of us schlepped to the airport at 6am – several hours before our scheduled flight – where we met the Annie Sullivan of Logan Airport and managed to all hop on the 7am. Three of us even flew first class. SB developed a nasty cold from two weeks of pre-graduation partying and stirring up massive dust bunnies while packing, so we relegated her to coach.
Of the experience the Judge said, “Well, at least from now on you’ll always check to make sure you have a ticket!”
Sorry, Mom, but I respectfully disagree. Last Tuesday, before the arrival of our parents, SB and I walked fifteen minutes across the Charles river to attend a class picnic. When we reached the entrance she remembered that she left our pre-purchased $20/plate tickets in her room and we had to wait for another friend to bring them before eating. SB made a comment similar to the Judge’s after that evening. The next day when we met our parents outside of the Harvard Yard picnic* (the one with the lunchboxes) I asked my sister if she had remembered our tickets for that meal. She turned very still and a little pale before slowly shaking her head and trotting back to her room to fetch them.
Let me be clear: I do not claim the title of smartest cookie for myself. Once last year SB returned from the lab she worked in with nasty horizontal cuts on her finger. When I asked her what happened she told me one of the lab’s zebra fish bit her. Horrified, I suggested she get real medical attention rather than just covering the wound with a Band-Aid, the way she was doing. She shrugged, unconcerned. Two days later she told me that zebra fish – at least the ones at her lab – are itsy microscopic things and that she’d cut her finger on a tape dispenser. She thought it was really funny.
Of course, even this cookie has never failed to confirm the existence of her plane tickets.
*Harvard is big on picnics.
I digress.
My sister the Harvard graduate has many amazing qualities. However, she possesses neither a grasp of English grammar (this includes simple verb conjugations; she composes sentences like, “I drunk that beer”) nor the wherewithal to juggle travel plans. Usually this is not an issue since someone in my family takes care of it for her.
Usually that person is me.
Due to my travel-happy summer plans, I booked my tickets for Harvard graduation separately from the rest of my family and left them to their own devices. I thought it might be a good exercise in reality for them.
Unfortunately I was wrong. On Friday at 11pm, after a long day of moving SB out of her dorm, my father went to print our boarding passes in the hotel’s business center and discovered that no one ever booked a flight for my sister.
At first I assumed Delta had made some mistake. “Just pull up the confirmation Daddy emailed you after he booked it,” I said. When Daddy interjected that his business manager booked the tickets, I revised my statement only slightly.
“What confirmation?” SB asked.
“Surely you asked for someone to email you your flight information,” I answered, suddenly unsure.
Perhaps by now you have guessed that the oversight was not, in fact, Delta’s. The next morning all four of us schlepped to the airport at 6am – several hours before our scheduled flight – where we met the Annie Sullivan of Logan Airport and managed to all hop on the 7am. Three of us even flew first class. SB developed a nasty cold from two weeks of pre-graduation partying and stirring up massive dust bunnies while packing, so we relegated her to coach.
Of the experience the Judge said, “Well, at least from now on you’ll always check to make sure you have a ticket!”
Sorry, Mom, but I respectfully disagree. Last Tuesday, before the arrival of our parents, SB and I walked fifteen minutes across the Charles river to attend a class picnic. When we reached the entrance she remembered that she left our pre-purchased $20/plate tickets in her room and we had to wait for another friend to bring them before eating. SB made a comment similar to the Judge’s after that evening. The next day when we met our parents outside of the Harvard Yard picnic* (the one with the lunchboxes) I asked my sister if she had remembered our tickets for that meal. She turned very still and a little pale before slowly shaking her head and trotting back to her room to fetch them.
Let me be clear: I do not claim the title of smartest cookie for myself. Once last year SB returned from the lab she worked in with nasty horizontal cuts on her finger. When I asked her what happened she told me one of the lab’s zebra fish bit her. Horrified, I suggested she get real medical attention rather than just covering the wound with a Band-Aid, the way she was doing. She shrugged, unconcerned. Two days later she told me that zebra fish – at least the ones at her lab – are itsy microscopic things and that she’d cut her finger on a tape dispenser. She thought it was really funny.
Of course, even this cookie has never failed to confirm the existence of her plane tickets.
*Harvard is big on picnics.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Barbarians In Bloom
Two things, to begin:
1. No, the blog is not finished. I just actually had a life for the past few days and so the time to blog escaped me. I shall carry on – but as my adventures in the US tend to be less exciting than those abroad the posts will likely come fewer and further between.
2. READ “TINKERS” BY PAUL HARDING. He is my old fiction teacher and his first novel just won the Pulitzer Prize.
On to a recap of Harvard graduation!
My parents’ flight landed in Boston a little after 11am last Wednesday. Due to the “marvelous” inventions of airplane wi-fi and Apple’s IPad they still managed to hassle and stress my sister and me all morning. Mostly we received half-finished emails from my mother, who, on what I understand as a whim, drove to the mall and purchased an IPad right before her trip. I should note that my mother is a highly educated and well-respected judge who emailed before most others in her generation, but upon failing to figure out how to load more songs on her IPod a few years ago went out and bought a second one. She now uses both. We also gave her an IPod shuffle before the other two IPods, but she washed that one with her running clothes.
An example of the emails we received Wednesday morning, while I prepared for a 40-minute interview in Portuguese and my sister tried to pack and get ready for graduation: “Can't figure out how to back up to correct a letter without erasing as I go. Think it is an apple.Mac” sent from my IPad.
Ten minutes later: “Think it is a Mac thing. Do you have any suggestions” sent from my IPad.
Another two minutes later: “How do you do it on the Magic keyboard for the Mac?”
Fifteen minutes after that: “How is the Port. int. Hope it is going well. Is S okay I am worried” sent from my IPad. This one, incidentally, was only sent to my sister SB – or “S”.
And, finally, my personal favorite: “You touch and hold, then slide your finger to back up without erasing. Very, very cool. It is intuitive. The device I mean. It knows what you Want. Almost before you do. Like periods and spelling and stuff.”
If I had not seen every episode of “Arrested Development” I would think of my family as the least competent on Earth. As I write this we sit in front of the fire (yes, it gets cold up at the farm, even in the summer), the three of them playing Gin Rummy. The Judge keeps trying to look through the discarded cards (against the rules) and my father continuously forgets that his turn comes after SB’s. The Judge is careful to explain that in card games you always play clockwise, and accompanies her statement with a grandiose circular arm motion. SB asks Daddy, “How did you never learn the clockwise rule?”
Daddy counters, “How did you never learn to not be obnoxious?”
Our parents arrived in Cambridge immediately after we watched SB’s roommate JF get commissioned for the US Navy. We snuck out of the end of the ceremony and met them in Harvard Square, then proceeded to a picnic in Harvard Yard at which individual meals were packed into crimson Harvard Alumni Association lunchboxes. The Judge enthusiastically snatched all four lunchboxes after dumping the food onto a table so that we could save them for beer coolers. I looked for a different family to which I might attach myself for the duration of the weekend.
The afternoon consisted of Class Day – an affair marked by truly awful speeches summarizing life lessons in practiced and boring tones. I seem to remember that one made me laugh. My parents and I skipped out before Christiane Amanpour’s talk, which my sister described as more of a pitch for her new TV show, and dodged SB’s camera-happy friends on our cross-yard sprint to Massachusetts Ave. We hailed a cab (a story in and of itself, so scour the blog for future posts) and checked in to our hotel, where I had the pleasure of sharing a suite with my parents. I scored the sofa bed, which turned out well since it meant I had no need to drag my suitcase up the stairs to the master bed. I was also closer to the exit, in case I needed to leave for my limited sanity’s safety, and the window, in case I needed to make a really quick escape. As we were on the sixteenth floor I kept the window option only in the farthest recesses of my mind.
We met back with SB – a relief for yours truly – and I explained to her my new tactic for dealing with our parents: the ignore factor. Basically I ignore our parents if they start repeating themselves or getting particularly annoying. SB scolded me for not exercising patience and two hours later embraced it. This method seemed promising in theory but in practice has them repeating themselves even more until one of us gets so frustrated that we explode in response. This causes them to smile slightly and walk away. Sometimes I forget that my parents are as wily as I am.
We dined at Grafton Street before an early night so we could awaken at 5am the following morning. Harvard maintains a barbaric tradition of opening the gates to the Yard for graduation-goers at 6:45am, and those same graduation-goers begin lining up at an indiscernibly early hour (indiscernible because I refuse to get up early enough to discover it). The Judge and Daddy and I arrived at 6:45, cut in line, and still only managed seats back as far as Widener Library. For those of you unfamiliar with Harvard Yard, that’s kind of far away. We had a view of a huge plasma screen, but could not see the stage. I should note that Harvard Yard also extends far past Widener and that many people who did not find seats proceeded to stand for the next five hours. As I said, it’s barbaric.
Luckily I brought my MacBook and spent much of the morning making videos with PhotoBooth’s mirror function. During video breaks I read the Steig Larsson book I braved the Coop (you’ll recall the picture-takers of the previous post) to buy. My one-line book review: it’s interesting, but not interesting enough to stand in gargantuan lines behind people taking pictures of their every moves. I would suggest ordering it from Amazon.com.
By the way, Harvard graduation is partially conducted in Latin, so I won’t be giving you a full recap.
We tried to laugh at more rough speeches and at noon followed SB back to her house, Quincy, where we sat for another two hours as they called her name and she walked across the stage to receive her diploma. I would call the entire day an enormous waste of time but for two important points:
1. My brilliant sister graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a major in Molecular Cellular Biology; and
2. Harvard gave me a special Harvard ice cream with crimson sprinkles and an H in the middle.
My terrifyingly odd family calls for my participation in “family time”. More on the weekend to follow.
1. No, the blog is not finished. I just actually had a life for the past few days and so the time to blog escaped me. I shall carry on – but as my adventures in the US tend to be less exciting than those abroad the posts will likely come fewer and further between.
2. READ “TINKERS” BY PAUL HARDING. He is my old fiction teacher and his first novel just won the Pulitzer Prize.
On to a recap of Harvard graduation!
My parents’ flight landed in Boston a little after 11am last Wednesday. Due to the “marvelous” inventions of airplane wi-fi and Apple’s IPad they still managed to hassle and stress my sister and me all morning. Mostly we received half-finished emails from my mother, who, on what I understand as a whim, drove to the mall and purchased an IPad right before her trip. I should note that my mother is a highly educated and well-respected judge who emailed before most others in her generation, but upon failing to figure out how to load more songs on her IPod a few years ago went out and bought a second one. She now uses both. We also gave her an IPod shuffle before the other two IPods, but she washed that one with her running clothes.
An example of the emails we received Wednesday morning, while I prepared for a 40-minute interview in Portuguese and my sister tried to pack and get ready for graduation: “Can't figure out how to back up to correct a letter without erasing as I go. Think it is an apple.Mac” sent from my IPad.
Ten minutes later: “Think it is a Mac thing. Do you have any suggestions” sent from my IPad.
Another two minutes later: “How do you do it on the Magic keyboard for the Mac?”
Fifteen minutes after that: “How is the Port. int. Hope it is going well. Is S okay I am worried” sent from my IPad. This one, incidentally, was only sent to my sister SB – or “S”.
And, finally, my personal favorite: “You touch and hold, then slide your finger to back up without erasing. Very, very cool. It is intuitive. The device I mean. It knows what you Want. Almost before you do. Like periods and spelling and stuff.”
If I had not seen every episode of “Arrested Development” I would think of my family as the least competent on Earth. As I write this we sit in front of the fire (yes, it gets cold up at the farm, even in the summer), the three of them playing Gin Rummy. The Judge keeps trying to look through the discarded cards (against the rules) and my father continuously forgets that his turn comes after SB’s. The Judge is careful to explain that in card games you always play clockwise, and accompanies her statement with a grandiose circular arm motion. SB asks Daddy, “How did you never learn the clockwise rule?”
Daddy counters, “How did you never learn to not be obnoxious?”
Our parents arrived in Cambridge immediately after we watched SB’s roommate JF get commissioned for the US Navy. We snuck out of the end of the ceremony and met them in Harvard Square, then proceeded to a picnic in Harvard Yard at which individual meals were packed into crimson Harvard Alumni Association lunchboxes. The Judge enthusiastically snatched all four lunchboxes after dumping the food onto a table so that we could save them for beer coolers. I looked for a different family to which I might attach myself for the duration of the weekend.
The afternoon consisted of Class Day – an affair marked by truly awful speeches summarizing life lessons in practiced and boring tones. I seem to remember that one made me laugh. My parents and I skipped out before Christiane Amanpour’s talk, which my sister described as more of a pitch for her new TV show, and dodged SB’s camera-happy friends on our cross-yard sprint to Massachusetts Ave. We hailed a cab (a story in and of itself, so scour the blog for future posts) and checked in to our hotel, where I had the pleasure of sharing a suite with my parents. I scored the sofa bed, which turned out well since it meant I had no need to drag my suitcase up the stairs to the master bed. I was also closer to the exit, in case I needed to leave for my limited sanity’s safety, and the window, in case I needed to make a really quick escape. As we were on the sixteenth floor I kept the window option only in the farthest recesses of my mind.
We met back with SB – a relief for yours truly – and I explained to her my new tactic for dealing with our parents: the ignore factor. Basically I ignore our parents if they start repeating themselves or getting particularly annoying. SB scolded me for not exercising patience and two hours later embraced it. This method seemed promising in theory but in practice has them repeating themselves even more until one of us gets so frustrated that we explode in response. This causes them to smile slightly and walk away. Sometimes I forget that my parents are as wily as I am.
We dined at Grafton Street before an early night so we could awaken at 5am the following morning. Harvard maintains a barbaric tradition of opening the gates to the Yard for graduation-goers at 6:45am, and those same graduation-goers begin lining up at an indiscernibly early hour (indiscernible because I refuse to get up early enough to discover it). The Judge and Daddy and I arrived at 6:45, cut in line, and still only managed seats back as far as Widener Library. For those of you unfamiliar with Harvard Yard, that’s kind of far away. We had a view of a huge plasma screen, but could not see the stage. I should note that Harvard Yard also extends far past Widener and that many people who did not find seats proceeded to stand for the next five hours. As I said, it’s barbaric.
Luckily I brought my MacBook and spent much of the morning making videos with PhotoBooth’s mirror function. During video breaks I read the Steig Larsson book I braved the Coop (you’ll recall the picture-takers of the previous post) to buy. My one-line book review: it’s interesting, but not interesting enough to stand in gargantuan lines behind people taking pictures of their every moves. I would suggest ordering it from Amazon.com.
By the way, Harvard graduation is partially conducted in Latin, so I won’t be giving you a full recap.
We tried to laugh at more rough speeches and at noon followed SB back to her house, Quincy, where we sat for another two hours as they called her name and she walked across the stage to receive her diploma. I would call the entire day an enormous waste of time but for two important points:
1. My brilliant sister graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a major in Molecular Cellular Biology; and
2. Harvard gave me a special Harvard ice cream with crimson sprinkles and an H in the middle.
My terrifyingly odd family calls for my participation in “family time”. More on the weekend to follow.
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