September 12th, 2011 marked one year since I arrived in Vanuatu along with 40 other weary potential volunteers. It seems like a very long time ago. Many current volunteers at the time mentioned that being a volunteer has many ups and downs. The difference from an ordinary life of ups and downs is that here the ups feel very high and the downs feel devastating. It certainly makes you feel alive, though.

I remember back in our training villages how we all got a kick out of the strangeness of the locals. They moved slow, did not work too hard, laughed often and honestly. The food that was made for us by our host families- it was strange and not particularly good, but I ate it. Most of us struggled with the language. I struggled more than others. I still am working on it one year later.

Then in early November I was sent to my site in the Island of Santo-the biggest island in the country, with the second largest city of Luganville. I was quite happy to be here. I could go to town and buy “white man” food whenever I wanted. There are a number of other English-speaking volunteers here that I have become close friends with. And many of the teachers here feel like m friends. Even when I left for a 5-week break last July, it was hard to say goodbye. I can’t imagine what it will be like after 2 years here.

But now as I contemplate my life at this one year mark, I am less happy, less thrilled at the little oddities of life here and very frustrated at progress on my work. It is not like this was unexpected. I was warned to set my expectations low. But I just want to leave here with some chunk of my project plan finished. I think I can still do that, but who knows. I will have to keep trying to be positive, keep trying to stay excited.

It is not just my work alone that keeps me down, but the general state of this country. It is so hard to see that it will ever be truly independent. There are volunteers here from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, England and France. There are probably others that I am not even aware of. They work in every aspect of the culture, from government offices to village health workers out in the bush. The locals here get so used to them, that one wonders how the country would do if suddenly all the vols went home.

The general population has the same desire to work hard that I have right now. Maybe I have Vanuatu-itis. Drink kava, storian (sit around and chat) with the locals and move slowly. At the end of the day I wonder if the storian part of the day is not the most important. We get to share what is going, what it is like in the US and what issues are important to ni-Vans or at least what is important to the little group you are sharing kava with. Sometimes it seems like trivial stuff, but isn’t most of life?

So what do I do now? I thought of giving up…jumping on a plane back to the US. But I changed m mind and decided to stick it out. If I can survive working for the same company for 25 years and not going crazy, I can take one more year here. A good friend of mine once said that when I get in a funk, I need to get “back to my body”, exercise, that is. So that’s my strategy-get more physically fit and see how that goes. Worse thing that could happen is that I would lose a few pounds. That would be a good thing.

Start with a walk tomorrow morning??

Just to show you that life here is not ALL bad, check out these pictures of this fabulous beach on my island. It is one of the best beaches in Vanuatu and you can see why. I am not in any of the photos, since I was holding the camera. But my friends include: Michael, the underwater hairy Jesus; Nancy, photogenic whether underwater or floating on a bed of ocean; Katie, doing a great underwater frog pose; Rex giving 2 thumbs up and Charlotte (bad camera work on that one-sorry Charlotte).

https://picasaweb.google.com/gene.sady/ChampagneBeach?authuser=0&feat=directlink

The following short article will appear in one of Vanuatu's weekly newspapers, "The Independent" The Peace Corps Staff asked a few of the "mature" volunteers to tell their story of their experience as a volunteer for a series of articles commemorating the 50th year of Peace Corps. I told them that I am more immature than most, but wrote this story anyway...

It has probably happened to you at least once in your lifetime – you wake up in the morning and when you look around you do not instantly recognize where you are. You may be in a hotel room in a strange city or at a friend’s house. But in a matter of seconds your brain will rapidly search through it’s vast memory bank and combining with the images around you it will reconstruct the events that led you to your current location. It all happens in a matter of a second or two.

As a Peace Corps volunteer serving in the Pacific Island country of Vanuatu this has happened to me more than a few times in the short 8 months that I have been here. And inevitably it is followed with a different question: “Why did I choose to do this?”

I was only 5 years old when the Peace Corps was formed inspired by ideas put forth by John F. Kennedy. When I was younger I did not think that the Peace Corps would be something I would want to do. But after years of working in corporate America as a Computer Engineer it began to look appealing to me to share some of what I learned about life with others in a far away land. I has always loved travel and learning about new cultures. It was important to me to make my life interesting by stepping out of my comfort zone.

So after a 16-month application process I was offered a position as an IT educator in Vanuatu. To be honest I actually had to look it up on a map. I never heard of the country before, but after a few short months it feels quite familiar to me. So far I have completed one 13-week term at a secondary (high) school on the Island of Espiritu de Santo teaching basic computer skills to 11th grade students. I also maintain all the computers for the school including helping teachers with their laptops if they need it.

To be sure there are times when I question my decision to join the Peace Corps. Then you have a few of those precious moments that warm your heart. For instance when I pass by my host family’s house and my little “brata” sees me and runs to me calling out “Brata Gene, Brata Gene” and crashes into my legs wrapping his arms around me. And the times when I walk over to ask one of the locals a question and then realize after chatting for an hour about nothing particularly important I forgot the question. But it doesn’t really matter. Being in the moment and sharing a small part of your day is more important.

I try to think of these things when I reach that point on those mornings of temporary amnesia because they are the small things that are the reward for choosing to join the Peace Corps. It is an experience that I already know I will not forget.

More stories to tell of entertaining 9 guests at my house for Easter, US Navy in Vanuatu for 2 weeks and strange medical stuff. Watch this space for more fun stories.

It is difficult to accept, but inevitable. Many people that I have met here in Vanuatu are only here for a short time. They are volunteers from Australia, New Zealand and the UK and of course the US. We generally lump them in to the category of ex-pats or ex-patriots. This is probably not a completely accurate term, but it works. They are not natives of Vanuatu. They are here only for 1-2 years to provide some service for the people of Vanuatu. Some get so enthralled with the country and its people that they stay up to 5 years (the maximum stay for Peace Corps volunteers). And some even decide to get jobs here and stay indefinitely. But most people leave to go back to their respective countries.

This is a little strange to get adjusted to. I grew up in a town of about 80-90,000 people and most people stayed in the area at least until they finished high school. So it was easy to develop long term relationships. Ask me if I am in contact with any of those people today and the answer would be no. But it was at least a relationship that had the chance of lasting 10-15 years. Here in Vanuatu you have to constantly be prepared to say goodbye. One Australian couple that I have started to get to know are leaving soon to go back to Australia. It saddens me. Another volunteer from New Zealand has only got 9 months left. And this doesn't even count the many Peace Corps volunteers who will leave this year around September.

So what do I do with this predicament?? I could go the route of not getting close to ANYONE, but that does not feel right to me. I already know that leaving my Ni-Van teachers and friend is going to be heart-wrenching. They have been very kind to me. I know they appreciate the help I am giving them. And I appreciate the open arms they have offered me. I seriously doubt that I would ever return to Vanuatu after I head back to the US, but I will never forget some of the people I have met here. And I have only been here 7 months!! They will remain in my heart.

So is it a "Love the one your with" attitude that I should take? I seem to remember that the Buddhist talk about the temporariness of life. Robbie/Randi - help me out here. So friendships and close connections can be temporary, but still meaningful. Even if I am to grasp this and live by it, there are still the goodbyes that are tough to handle.

I must remember that though we say goodbye, the people I care about can stay in my heart. We can stay in touch with mail, e-mail, phone. If they are important enough to me, I will do it.

Wait a minute...I don't do very well with my friends back in the US. Maybe I feel that they will always be there when I return, so it is not as critical. Do you guys think that is true? Craig?? OK, so I will put more effort into keeping in touch with those friends back in the US, so I can start practicing what I preach. Fair enough??

Till then - Be Well, my Friends!

Today's posting is like 3 postings in one. There are 3 different topics covered here. They are not exactly related except for the fact that they all have something to do with Vanuatu. Duh!

Here is to RESPECT:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a community where you were the only one with white skin and the only one who could not speak the language of your neighbors. Have you ever tried teaching high school in ANY classroom, let alone a classroom of kids from that same community where you don't know the language?

Welcome to my world in Vanuatu.

I have a new found respect for minorities in the US or anywhere for that matter. I now know what it is like to walk down the street and watch people stare. I now know what it is like to endure giggles after you walk by someone. Are they laughing at me? Or is it something they were saying to each other totally unrelated? If they say something to me in English, I wonder if they are still somehow laughing inside that I don't know a damn thing about them or their lives. Often I sit in the staff room where the teachers work on their breaks from class. They all chat and laugh about who knows what. I pick up words here and there, but for the most part I am in my own little world, somewhat confused and definitely out of place.

So when I return to the US and notice someone obviously from another country trying to communicate with an English speaker, I will be much more sympathetic. I will notice that look when they hear you speak and don't understand. They want to understand, but it is hard to learn a new language. It wears you down to constantly be paying such close attention to every word being uttered.

Back to the classroom - my class was going so well until I gave my students a written test (in English). Aside from 2 students (out of 60) who got every question correct, the grades were miserable. I was pretty sure they understood my English speaking, but why did they not understand the written words? Because reading is the hardest part of learning a new language. So I am left with giving them the test over again, but translated into French. At least I am learning more French this way, so all is not lost.

But I have a great respect for teachers everywhere because this is not easy. Even disregarding the language barrier, teaching is hard stuff. And I only have 2 - 11th grade sections to teach for a total of 4 hours per week. Most teachers here have at least 18 hours of classes a week. It's tough work.

Next up a bug story...

I usually sleep with a fan running in my room. It helps to keep from waking up with a soaking wet bed from sweat. And a small added side benefit is that it produces a nice background noise to drown out any funny little noises in the night. Sometime in the middle of last night I woke up and actually felt slightly cool. This is a rare event here in Vanuatu. So I pulled up my mosquito net and reached down to switch off the fan. I replaced the net back over my bed to give me back that mock sense of security. As I tried to get back to sleep I couldn't help but noticed that the deafening silence was being disturbed. There was a quiet scratching noise that seemed not too far away. My first thought was to turn the fan back on and ignore it, but that mosquito net did not provide enough comfort to go that route.

So I agonized over this for some time while cocking my head this way and that like a silly dog to try and get a better sense of the direction of the mysterious noise. It still was hard to tell where or what it was. I had not seen any mice in a while, but there have been a few more of the 2-inch long cockroaches wandering around lately. I really hate those things. I know they are not that harmful, but they are ugly as sin. Finally I grabbed my headlamp and stepped out into the wilderness of my bedroom floor to investigate. Standing upright helped to give me a better sense of the direction of the noise. It was definitely coming from the floor near the head of the bed. I shined the light in that direction.

A large millipede came racing across the floor right towards me. I would have jumped right out of my pants, but I wasn't wearing any!! This sucker was moving fast and heading for some clothes on the floor across the room. I remembered my Peace Corps training back about 5 months ago. These suckers gave a very nasty bite that could be extremely painful. Sometimes the bites would require a hospital visit. I also remembered that the best way to kill one of these was with the sole of a shoe. I flicked on the light grabbed a tennis shoe that was conveniently on the floor and pounded the sucker about 5 times. I think the first strike actually killed it, but you want to make sure with these guys. I have seen the heads of these things cut off, but still they can wiggle and bite. Just to be super safe, I got the Mortein (bug spray) and gave it a nice coating.

I'm not one to usually be very scared of little bugs, but this thing was about 5 inches long and ugly. And anything that little that can inflict extreme pain, must go. I will place a picture of my friend here just so you can get an idea of how creepy it looks.

A wall of rain:

A few days ago I woke up to the usual pleasant orange glow of sunrise across the Segond Sound. I peered out the windows facing the water and Aore (ow-ree) Island was dark green with the orange sun starting to poke up over the trees. I started my usual ritual of heating up water for tea, starting blankly out the window and checking my computer to see how far some of my downloads made it during the evening. My Internet connection is so slow it takes my all evening to download one 30 minute TV show. But I tolerate it because, well I have no choice and it is better than not having any connection.

I think maybe an hour passed. I watched one Daily Show episode, finished my tea, had breakfast. Now that the sound was off on the computer, I noticed a faint hissing noise. It sounded sort of like waves at the ocean, but from far away. Could it be a tsunami? Naw, we would have heard something from the PC staff. Maybe it was wind? I decided to take a look outside.

Just an hour earlier there was a clear view of Aore Island. Now the sky was pale gray and blended into the color of the water. Aore Island seemed to have vanished behind a vale of pale gray. The ocean wave sound was not the ocean but a wall of rain coming across the sound. As it got closer to our side of the sound, the noise increased and a little breeze picked up. The wall came down upon the earth as if it was the end of days. Some of you who have been in the tropics before know what that is like. It seems inconceivable that rain can fall so fast and hard that you cannot even hear yourself think. Within 30 minutes the sun was shining, the wall moved on. Being outside at that time was very similar to the last time I was in a steam bath at the local gym in the US. There is rarely a dull moment with weather around here.

Living in Vanuatu gives you a great sense of how powerful Nature can be. The islands of this country follow a tectonic fault which is the western edge of the Pacific Rim of fire. The Eastern edge runs through the western US, the Cascades of Oregon and Washington. The peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California are also part of it. So it is not a huge surprise that there are lots of earthquakes here. But how many DO we have, exactly? And how big are they? I wanted to know the answers before I wrote this, so I could give you some perspective.

The US Geological Survey in the US has all those answers. They have a fantastic website which is updated in real time as earthquakes occur around the world. Check out http://earthquake.usgs.gov and see when the last earthquake happened in your area. Just last night I was sitting in my house and I felt a fairly mild earthquake. Within about 15 minutes it was indicated on the USGS site as a 5.0 quake only a few miles off of Santo Island.

So how many earthquakes do you think there have been in Vanuatu in the last 6 months? Let's narrow it down and look up only the ones above 5.0 in magnitude: 127 !!! That's right. That is not a typo.

This is just within Vanuatu! It is crazy. What is also of interest is the depth of the epicenter. Many of the quakes here are very deep into the earth's crust whereas many of the quakes I looked up in California are near the surface. The quakes near the surface tend to do more damage to structures. During these last 6 months we have had a 7.3 earthquake that caused practically no damage. IF that happened in California, look out!

More on perspective, though. We all know about the 8.6 earthquake in Japan recently. It was shocking and sad to see the devastation it has caused. And with at least 2 nuclear power plants in serious trouble, they have serious dangers to face still. I wanted to find out how many quakes Japan has received to compare. During the last WEEK only, Japan has had 342 earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater!! That's in one week! I know that many call these aftershocks, but they are significant seismic events in themselves.

My reactions to these quakes here are somewhat different than when I lived in California. After surviving the Loma Prieta Earthquake in Santa Cruz back in 1989 (7.1) most California earthquakes really scare the hell out of me. You can't help but think: "Is this the BIG ONE?" Everyone keeps predicting that someday California will get a Japan-like earthquake and the devastation will be horrific. I hope that never does happen. But here in Vanuatu people seem to take the quakes in stride, almost as if they are amusing. And I must admit I am starting to feel that way as well. I don't hide under anything or stand in a doorway. I don't try to get outside. I just ride it out, then look it up at USGS. Next one up is number 128.

Earthquakes are not the only risk from a fickle Mother Nature. Cyclones are a common threat as well. They are called cyclones here, but they are essentially the same type of weather event as a hurricane is in the Atlantic Ocean. Vanuatu typically gets 2-3 a season. This year we have had 4 cyclones pass through the islands. One storm did not quite get up to cyclone status, but dumped a significant amount or rain. If you see one of these on a satellite photo it is impressive. They are enormous in their span across the earth. The swirl of clouds can cover the entire country (which equates to the size of California, roughly). They suck up an incredible amount of water and then hurl it back down with a force that can be painful if you happen to be silly enough to be outside. And of course there usually is very strong wind that comes along with the pelting rain.

Surprisingly there have not been any major injuries from any of the cyclones here this year. At least I have not heard of any. There has been quite a bit of structural damage on some of the islands. You can imagine the corrugated metal roofs that are common here flying all over the place during one of these storms.

Floods, wind, intense sunshine and earthquakes all combine to make Mother Nature the main event here in Vanuatu. We can only hope that we remain fortunate to not have any serious harm from all these events. Our friends in Japan have not been so lucky. Help them out with a donation, if you can. They have a very rough road ahead of them.

As promised I will tell you of a little kava drinking adventure that my fellow teachers here love to repeat and laugh about regularly. One evening, a Friday me thinks, I was asked to join some of the teachers for some kava. They told me they would stop by my house and pick me up. So I went back to the house to wait for them.

As is typical with N-vans, they take their time. Time was ticking by ever so slowly. I was pretty much giving up that they would ever show up. I just happened to have a nice cool bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge, so I had a glass. I read a few more pages of my book, "The Great Gatsby" and was finishing off my 3rd glass of wine when the school truck pulled up outside and the horn honked.

The school truck is an extended cab pickup. Usually when I go anywhere with the folks from school, they put me in the front seat. But on this occasion, the truck was full, so I happily hopped in the back. It is quite typical for people to ride in the back of pickup trucks here. I treasured the experience because it was a typical hot evening. The cool breeze felt great as I stood up in the back holding on to the metal railing behind the cab.

Part of this adventure involved dropping teachers off at their respective homes in town. Many teachers live outside of the school property near the town of Luganville. My Principal usually takes the school truck home to his house and he helps out by giving some of the teachers rides. But on this night we dropped off the Principal first and my Deputy Principal took over the driving duties.

We then stopped at a kava bar not too far from the Principals house. It was your typical kava bar with crude benches made of unfinished wood. The structures of the bar where corrugated metal. The smell of the kava always makes me start to gag, because I know that awful taste will be in my mouth soon. But I keep going back. One teacher bought me one shell and we all sat around having quiet conversation. Kava bars are always somewhat quiet and subdued. There are mostly men at the bars, but in Santo it is not frowned upon if a woman comes to enjoy kava. That is NOT the case in all the islands. Apparently in Tanna, women cannot even go near a kava bar without be yelled at or worse.

So we all had our second shell and then headed out. The second kava bar was at a corner of 2 streets. There were 3 kava bars within spitting distance. The one we went into was like a kava factory. It was setup with little spitting "troughs" where you drink your shell, then spit and gag if you want, into the pit. Doesn't this sound lovely? We only hung out here for a short time, one shells worth. Are you keeping track (that's 3 along with the wine).

I hopped back into the truck and stood up so I could enjoy the breeze. I admit that the kava has the most awful taste, but the gentle mellowness is hard to not enjoy. I was feeling pretty good by this time. We dropped off a few more teachers. We were down to myself, my Deputy and one of the dormitory managers, Gideon. I was content with the world. On the way back to the school, the Deputy decided to make one more stop at "Red Light Nakamal."

We had one, well maybe 2 more shells, and chatted for what seemed like an immeasurable amount of time. I heard the Deputy state that it was time to go. I was seated on a bench with a large post to my right side. My brain told me I had to get up an walk 180 degrees around the pole to go down some steps to the car. My body tried to follow suit. But what happened is that I got up grasped the pole with my right hand, swung around it as my feet went right out from underneath me. My forehead went straight down onto the bench that I just got up from with a loud smack.

Both my Deputy and Gideon had to carry me to the car as my legs no longer obeyed any of my brains commands. It was the weirdest feeling that I have ever had. I did not feel drunk, but my legs just would not work. Once we got back to my house, they carried me in a placed me on my couch. I made a trip to the bathroom shortly after to give back some of the kava.

The next day I recall the words from others about mixing alcohol and kava. Don't do it, they said. Opps! So now everyone tells this story and has a good laugh. It was sort of like a rite of passage, if you don't mind the sick pun. I wouldn't recommend it, but it IS funny now that it is over. I still notice the red light every time I go by that nakamal in the early evening. Fond memories!!

My iTunes program randomly selected “The End” by the Doors. I was drinking a little wine. It was another intensely hot day in the tropics. It was hard to not think about Martin Sheen going crazy in his hotel room at the beginning of the classic “Apocalypse Now” movie. Here I am waiting for my assignment to teach 11th graders. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it seemed a bit humorous to me. I turned off the music.

It has been almost unbearably hot here during the last few days. In a typical day I will go through 3-4 changes of my shirt. And it is not due to my rigorous exercise regime. I am talking about sitting in the computer lab or in my house and watching sweat bead up on my skin until it starts to roll down the side of my face. I have a piece of cloth I use to place on the table in front of me so I can type on my computer and not get the table all wet with sweat. The night before last I woke up in the middle of the night and had to turn my pillow over to get to a dry area. If I go out for even a few minutes during the middle of the day, I can feel the top of my head start to burn. It doesn’t help much that I have very little hair up there to protect me. But if I put a hat on my head feels like it is in a slow-bake oven.

So it was a great relief early last evening to have a cool breeze blow in some clouds. The evening was delightfully cool. I slept comfortably without having to flip the pillow even once. This morning I woke up to a bright orange glow. I knew it had to be the sunrise, so I sat up in bed and pulled the mosquito net over my head so I could gaze at the sight unobstructed. The water of the Segound Sound had only a slight ripple from the early morning breeze. Aore Island acted like a black barrier between the ocean and the layers of sky and clouds above it. The top of this layer was irregular due to the trees of various heights. Then there were gray puffy clouds followed by a baby blue sky streaked with wispy white clouds. The next layer up was were all the magical color glowed. The intense orange sunlight was diffused though a layer of fair-weather clouds. A nice way to start my day.

I would like to report that I am settling in to my new home here in Santo. But after spending a little over 2 weeks back in Vila speaking mostly English all day, my language skills have taken a major hit. When I returned to Santo I was pleasantly surprised at the warm greetings from all my teachers and friends here. It was then that it really hit me that I could not remember how to say things in Bislama. Things are even worse because my other PC friends here in Santo are pretty much fluent. So I feel like an idiot when we are all together and I can seem to get a full sentence out.

I’m still living in a temporary house. There is no indication yet when the “permanent” place will be ready. So I still have to occasionally share my home with other teachers that are in town for workshops. It is a bit annoying, especially when they leave dirty dishes in the sink and expect me to wash them. On the flip side, I have made some nice friends with the guests. I have also had some nice visits from my Peace Corps friends who are traveling through Santo to their respective islands. It is great to spend a little extra time with fellow volunteers away from the whole crowd of our group of 38.

One of my first tasks back here in Santo was to prepare for a second 3-day workshop for teachers. This one was planned for more advanced computer users. It was to cover a little more advanced Windows XP as well as MS Office Word and Excel. The tricky part is that my Deputy Principal told me that it had to be 3-4hr days instead of 8 hrs. This would allow the teachers to prepare for their school year. So I worked frantically to squish the material down to a 12-hour course.

In the end workshop was a success. It was quite pleasing to give the teachers an assignment and then look up and seeing them intently working in silence to get it down. They are anxious to learn new things, which made my life very easy. For the most part, I think they picked up a thing or two. That’s about all you can ask for.

The nightly kava drinking continues with the teachers. I only join in occasionally, maybe once or twice a week. My Deputy setup a nice dinner for me on my birthday, said a few nice words, handed me a shirt all wrapped up, then all the guys went over to drink kava. We left the women and children to eat and watch after the food. I was given one of the first shells as the guest of honor. It was quite a large one and I felt obligated to drink it all down. It did not sit well with me. I refused several other offers for a second round. I sat mostly in silence as many of the men continued to drink, spit and talk in quiet tones. After what seemed like an eternity, the Deputy came over to me with a plastic container of food and told me I should take it home. This is a subtle way to tell someone: we know you have had enough. You are not drinking. Time to go. I did not take it badly. I WAS ready to go.

School was supposed to start today, Valentines Day. But as is typical here in Vanuatu, everyone is late. The kid’s families did not all pay their school fees on time, so some cannot come yet. Some of the teachers did not show up yet. They already know that nothing will start until at least next week. The teachers here are still struggling to come up with a timetable for all the classes. I made a half-assed effort to find some software for the task. It is not easy sorting out 300 students, 30 teachers, 12 classrooms and 15 different subjects and fit them all into slots for 7 periods during a 5-day week. They have been doing this by hand for years. I promised that by next term, I will have figured out an automated way to help them do this. There are plenty of software programs that do this, but it is hard to learn all the ins and outs in one or two days.

I guess that is all for now. I will relate a funny kava adventure in my next posting. Till then, be well.

I looked back at the last 2 postings here and realized that they were a bit dry. It was necessary, I think, to cover the items discussed so you would all have a good picture of where I am these days. But time to lighten things up a bit…Here in Vanuatu it is quite common for ni-Vans to use body/hand language to communicate. As an example you will be asked a question and towards the end of the question the person asking will raise both eyebrows. Sometimes they will throw in a slight tilt of the head backwards in sync with the eyebrows. This is an easy one to translate. It basically means that they are trying to emphasize the question. This small gesture is even used when making a statement. In that case it means: “What do you think?” They are basically turning a statement into a question. This little eyebrow movement is so common that most of us Peace Corps people have begun to emulate the same gesture.Hand gestures are also used everywhere. It is almost like a “pidgin” version of a true sign language. I have seen 2 people in passing cars have a complete conversation with each other without ever uttering a word. Here is a sample of how it works.One ni-Van is driving slowly down the main drag in Luganville and spots his friend on the opposite side of the street.Driver: holds up his arm, his hand with fingers pointed upward palm towards himTranslation: Where are you going?Friend: points off in the opposite direction with the finger slightly higher than horizontal.Translation: “over there” or depending how well they know each other, he may be telling him an exact location.Driver: brings his arm down, curls all fingers together except index finger, points finger to the ground.Translation: asks him to meet him back here.Friend: brings his arm back and circles hand downward to point to the ground as well.Translation: he agrees by pointing to the same placeDriver: points off to the distance with hand slightly above horizon, then circles it back towards himself and again points to the ground.Translation: he is going to someplace “over there” and he will come back and meet him here.The “over there” can get a little more complex depending on how well the 2 people know each other. Sometimes in spoken language the term going “antap” or “on top” is used. This basically means that you are going either up to the town or up on a hill above wherever you are.This type of interaction is commonly seen when people are a little too far apart to actually hear each other. Here is a more complex interaction. Papa is walking along the busy street and sees his wife and son across the street going in the other direction.Papa: raises his arm up with fingers pointed upwardsMama: sweeps her arm in a half circle away from herself with finger pointedPapa: points lower towards the son, then to himself and then off in front of himMama: looks down at the boy (he just looks back), and repeats the same circular motionPapa: vigorously repeats the same gestureMama: holds her hand towards Papa and wags her 4 fingers back and forth, then flips up one index finger and points off in the general direction of home.Papa: flips the back of his hand towards Mama and then continues walkingTranslation: Papa asks where the 2 are going? Mama says in the store right around the corner. Papa wants the boy to come with him to get some fruit at the market. The boy doesn’t want to go because he has chores to do at home. Papa is pissed and says that he better come or he will beat him when they get home. Mama tells him to take a hike and don’t get too drunk before you come home for dinner. We need to make sure we pay the bills this evening and my Mom is coming to visit for a few days next Tuesday. Papa says his life stinks and walks off.You didn’t REALLY believe that translation did you? It is pretty close to that, but not quite. But in reality it is not that far off from what could be communicated. Most of these interactions are influenced greatly by how well the 2 people know each other. A husband and wife can communicate on a much deeper level. Those of you reading this who are married know how much can be communicated with a just a glance from your partner.I have also had many instances of young kids giving me the raised eyebrows when I ask them a question. They don’t respond in words. If I repeat the same question, I get the same eyebrow raise. I still as of yet don’t know if that means they have no clue what I’m saying or the answer is yes. Maybe one of my other Peace Corps friends can help me with this one.

Bonjour...me again. As promised I will give you a glimpse into what my work will be like. In a short 2 weeks here I came up with about 18 ideas for projects that the school could work to on improve the long-term goals for computer education. Some projects are not directly involving computers, but they are things I thought of that could be of interest to the school (and they sound like fun). The school is planning to expand into what they call "technical" subjects starting next year. These are areas such as machine repair (including auto), woodworking and restaurant/hospitality (they already provide some training here) and computers. As part of this plan they want to build 3 or more new buildings. In addition they want to connect all these buildings together with the same computer network. In my mind you need to plan this out carefully, yet they do not even have a map of the layout of the school. So I volunteered to create one. I still am not quite sure how to DO that, but it sounds like fun. I'm thinking I would start by getting the dimensions of all the current buildings. Then if I made scale models on paper, I could place them on a larger sheet in the approximate areas. Maybe if I get REAL ambitious I could create an AutoCAD drawing, but that is a lower priority.

The school here actually has 2 Internet connections. One is for the Administration buildings and the other runs into the computer lab. They are both DSL connections at a painfully slow speed of 128KB/sec. To give you a rough idea how slow that is by comparison it is about 100-1,000 times slower than your typical Internet service in the US!! Or put another way about 2-times faster than an old fashion dial-up line. But it IS on all day, so I am the envy of many of my fellow volunteers.

So out of these 18 "projects" there was not one of them that the Deputy and my counterpart, Theo, disapproved. They thought they were great ideas AND all needed. Theo by the way is also an IT teacher here. He has taught classes mostly in MS Office tools. He is eager to learn more about hardware and OS installation and maintenance. It is great having someone that can take some of the knowledge I have to offer and carry on with it after I leave. This is not always the case here, so some places get dependent on having new volunteers every 2 years.

All classes at St. Michel are taught in French with one exception: English. There will be 2 exceptions starting in February with the addition of my computer class for 11th graders. This will be my first daily duty - teaching basic computer skills and MS Office tools. The sessions will not start until February since the school is on break until then. All the students leave to go back to their respective homes in early December. So it is very quiet here all of a sudden. The dorms are empty, classes deserted and no one but teachers coming by the lab to finish up their grading on the computers.

But I have been keeping busy. My first task was to get a handle on the anti-virus software on all the computers. Many of the systems had outdated software, some expired and some not working. I also installed the same software on 10 teacher laptops. One of the biggest issues with viruses here is the use of USB flash drives. They are spread by people who use their flash drives on an unprotected or infected computer, then they bring that flash drive to school and load the virus. Thanks to my fellow IT volunteers we have a nifty little program that prevents the autoplay feature from kicking off viruses on USB drives. This has helped quite a bit. Still, having Internet access into the computer lab will continue to be an issue.

One other huge issue for me anyway is that several computers have the French version of Windows XP installed. It is good for those that can read French which does not include me. Fortunately this is only the case on one computer. I have read that for Windows 7 you can install the English version, then overlay it with a French language pack. This allows you to switch languages on the fly. Once I get some of the computers upgraded, I will have to work on that. Also some computers have English AND French versions of MS Office. Seems like a lot of extra space to use up, but it seems to work without any huge issues.

Enough of the tech-talk...the other work I plan on doing in just a week from tomorrow is training the teachers basic computer skills. We had them fill out a short survey on their computer skills. They fell into 2 very distinct groups - one with very little or no computer skills and one with intermediate skills. So we will have two 3-day workshops starting next week. Now I just need to learn Office 2007 :) AND make some PowerPoint slides.

So that is the basic plan for what I will be doing here. I know I will be very busy. All the teachers and students are very eager to learn anything they can about computers. The language barrier will make things challenging. I have got approval from the Peace Corps to take French lessons, so I am looking into starting that in January. At least I will learn a language that I have hopes of speaking again after I return home. I don't think there will be much call for speaking Bislama.

Au revoir!

It is time for me to write a little about my new home on the Island of Santo or more formally Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit). This will be the location of my home and work in Vanuatu for the next 2 years. The process that the Peace Corps uses to pick a location for a volunteer is still quite mysterious to me. They guard the location of these sites as if it was a National Security issue. There are SOME good reasons for this. In the past when the info got out too early to the volunteers, some left before they even made an effort to visit the site. Going to your 2-year site is a very emotional event. You are leaving all your friends that you have bonded with for the last 2 months. You will make new friends, but it can be very tiring to once again say goodbye to your host families in the training and your Peace Corps buddies. Up until that emotional day were our Country Director announced each persons placement, I had hints that I was going to be placed in Port Vila on the Island of Efate. So I was quite surprised to find out that I would be going to a French/Catholic School just outside of Luganville. Now I would have to worry about yet another language. At least I had some experience with French, although it was centuries ago when I was in high school.

Santo is the largest of all the islands in Vanuatu at a whopping 1500 sq. miles, about the size of Rhode Island. When you are here it seems much larger due to the fact that the paved road encompasses only one small part of the south edge and the east coast. The remainder of the island has dirt roads along most of the perimeter. The remainder is what is called "bush" land that you get to on very small roads or on foot. The main airport is actually an international airport. I have not checked flights, but apparently you can travel to as many destinations from here as you can from Port Vila, the capital. The island provides some of the finest scuba diving in all of Vanuatu. Their is a luxury liner that is sunk off the coast that is quite popular to check out. Also the US dumped a huge amount of equipment off the coast before they left their base here in WWII. Apparently they did this to avoid letting it fall into enemy hands, or so one story says. I think they were just too lazy to haul it all back to the US.

The town of Luganville is not much to look at. There is one main street of shops and restaurants and a few side streets that lead off to some homes and other smaller businesses. For some reason which I have yet to fathom, many of the shops are owned by Chinese. They seem to have some of the same stuff, but slightly varying prices. So you may go to one shop if you are interested in bowls and glasses for your home, but if you need rice or some other staple food you would want to head down the street to another shop for a better price. There is a Wilco hardware/home supply store - sort of a smaller version of Home Depot. There are also a few computer shops where you can buy decent computers and parts for a price about 100% higher (or more) than the US.

The main paved road out of town toward the south hugs the coastline. After about a 10 minute drive the pavement ends and turns to dirt for the remainder of its journey around the south end of the island. Just before the pavement ends, though, there is a sprawling campus of buildings raised just above the road level. This is St. Michel College. But before I go into more details of the campus and my house, I should step back to the actual day of arrival here...

I was certainly relieved to hear that one other volunteer would be traveling with me to Santo. Michael would be stationed at a site about 1-1/2 hour truck ride down that dirt road that I mentioned. We arranged for a bus to take us to the airport in Vila at 6:30 am with about 10 bags/suitcases. I say "about" 10 for a specific reason. Quite surprisingly the bus driver showed up a little early and seemed a little more than anxious to get going. In the rush to get things into the bus ( a "bus" here is basically a minivan - they have a "B" at the beginning of the license plate that indicates that you can flag them down on the street and they will take you where you want to go), one of my bags was left in the hotel storage room. This would not be discovered until we arrived in Luganville.

It was too quick of a goodbye to all the friends we left behind at the hotel. They were preparing for their departures. We were on our way. It was a short 50 minute flight to Santo. We passed over many small islands that look so perfect from above. It is nearly impossible to tell if any of them are inhabited from the air. The water varied from turquoise to dull blue as you glanced from the narrow beaches out to the never-ending ocean. We knew that someone would meet us at the airport to bring us to our new homes. We had pictures of our host family, but that sometimes is not all that helpful. As I walked into the airport, I glanced around for a man resembling the "Deputy" in my photo. He was nowhere to be found. I started walking out to the outer part of the terminal, since the luggage had not arrived yet. As I made my way out a short bearded black man came up to me. He did not say a word, but lowered his head in an inquisitive gesture (gestures are REAL big here) and raised one eye-brow. I said in a panic: "I'm Gene." So much for my attempt at a French and/or Bislama greeting. He smiled and shook my hand and replied something I could not understand. The term Deputy is used here to indicate the man (or woman) who is essentially like a Vice Principal. He is also my "host Papa." Every volunteer has a host family. For those of us at schools, this usually is a little different. This is because we live on the campus of the school. Many of our host families are nearby but maybe at the edge of the school grounds. So the proximity of the host family is not very similar to other volunteers who may be living directly next to their families. This is fine by me, since it offers a slight improvement in privacy.

We stopped for a bit at a hotel in town to drop of my luggage. Deputy Jean explained to me that the school was hosting a 10 day workshop on small engine repair ( see some of the photos here ). The students came from many other islands and were staying in the guest house on campus. This house is supposed to be my temporary house. Until the workshop ends, the hotel was my temporary, temporary home. We arrived at a small dirt road that led up a short hill to the Luganville side of the campus. The drive to get here from town is only about 10 minutes by truck. The main dirt road of the campus runs parallel to the paved road below. It is roughly a mile and a half in length-the length of the main campus property.

The buildings of the school are all cement block, rust colored from the ground to 4 feet high and off-white to the roof. Some of the buildings are remnants of the old French colonial government that coexisted with the British government buildings on another part of the island. The church is the original wood structure built in the 1930's. Farther inland from the outer dirt road, there is a large strip of open green space that is used as a futbol(soccer) field. This is flanked by a girls dormitory on one side and a boys dormitory on the other. The kids who come to school here live on campus since their families live on many different islands all around the country.

The guest house that I am now staying in is quite spacious. There are 3 bedrooms, a big open living/kitchen area and an indoor bathroom with shower. The living room windows look out at the ocean below. There is almost always a nice cooling breeze blowing in from the ocean. The kitchen has a small refrigerator and 2 burner gas table top stove. An indoor sink sits right below a window looking out towards the south campus. Now this place may sound all that plush, but compare it to some of my Peace Corps friends and you will understand. Some folks live in kastom (traditional) homes made woven plant material and thatched roofs and floors of dirt. Their "kitchens" are outside in another structure. They consist of a pile of stones for cooking over and simple tables for preparing food. They may or may not have running water and the bathrooms are usually small outhouses and a bucket for taking a shower. Electricity may be non-existent or only available from a generator for part of the day. I know I am missing out on this more back-to-nature, traditional lifestyle here, but I'm ok with that. I get to visit those friends, then I can come back to "luxury."

We arrived at the school grounds after a short break at the hotel. I was ushered into a room which was smartly decorated with multi-colored cloth and ribbons. I was introduced to a few of the many teachers and students there. This was followed by a short speech by the Deputy and of course a prayer. Even though I did not understand all of what was said I caught at least the fact that they were all very happy to have me here to help them. This is the first time this particular school has received a volunteer. This is good in many ways, since they have no particular expectations.

The greeting was followed by a short tour of the property. It is quite an impressive sprawling campus. There are homes for the Deputy and a few teachers ("The Brothers) at one side of the campus. This is adjacent to a few administration buildings and a cafeteria for the students. Next in the row of buildings is the boys quarters, several classrooms, then the computer lab. Beyond that is the guest house (my new temp home), a small greeting building (used for teaching students hospitality - serving guests, cleaning, etc) and the housing for the Sisters. Continuing on in the same direction is the girls quarters, more classrooms then the Pastor's home. Finally there is the chapel and the primary school (1st thru 6th grades). At the very end of the property there is a cluster of homes for teachers. One of them is designated for me. All together the main school property encompasses roughly 100 acres not counting the property on top of the hill. I will go into that in a bit.

Since this is getting long, I will close for now. Next I will write more about what I am supposed to be doing here and what I AM currently doing.

One constant annoyance here in Vanuatu is the fly, the ordinary small fly that we typically call the "house fly." I'm sure there is some fancy scientific name for it, but you know which pest I'm referring to. They swarm you here as if you are some piece of decaying meat. Maybe they just like the smell of your sweat. If you are unlucky enogh to have a cut or a sore on an exposed part of your body, you can expect an increase in visitation hours from our enemy, the fly. They love to gather around an open wound, no doubt attempting to deposit materials later to become baby flies. I won't elaborate, but you can probably guess what I mean.

The environment here is ideal for the fly. It is warm and humid all the time. This means there is always something decaying or moist to land on and spread germs and other things. I know I should somehow be thankful for the fly's effort to help in the cycle of life. But when they land on me, a somewhat healthy human, not yet dead (maybe only slightly decaying) it annoys the hell out of me. Find some decaying mango or piece of excrement to check out. I am not ripe enough for your efforts.

The other day I was having lunch with another Peace Corps volunteer who has been here for a little over 1 year. She carried on a conversation even while a fly hovered around her head then landed on her forehead. She didn't even attempt to swat it away. I thought to myself whether I would be as complacent 1 year from now. Check back here in 1 year and I wil give you my answer. For now...DEATH TO ALL FLIES!!

Next rant...dogs, cats and roosters...

The day started out with my Papa John telling me to bring my bush knife (machete) with me on our walk to the next town of Takara. Brian met us out at the road by my house and we began the long trek to work on building a church. We really could not say exactly what they wanted us to do. The pastor had asked about our ability to draw up building plans, but that was about it. Brian had no tools to bring. We each brought an ample supply of water. I also brought sunscreen that I applied to any bare spots of skin.

Our village has one main dirt road that leads to the beach from the main ring road or American Road as many call it here. The reason for the later name is because it was Americans who were here during WWII that built the first road that completely encircles the entire island. The locals hear love to tell the story of how the Americans came and built a huge airfield and bunkers all around this end of the island. They also built a major airstrip on the island of Santo. There are many relics of their presence here including 2 planes that are submerged off of the coast. I have not seen them yet, but have heard that it is quite interesting to snorkel around the area of the plane.

to be continued...

It has been a little frustrating to 1.) not have much time to write and 2.) not have electricity for any of my electronic toys including my laptop, which I use for writing. Sure I have written some things the old fashion way with pen and paper, but those items have not been transcribed to the blog since there is so little time that I get to use the Internet. But on the plus side it has made life easier to not worry about such things and just chill with the locals and Peace Corps folks.

So I am writing this in the hopes that I can summarize some of the last 2 weeks as well as catch up on some important items that I missed before.

As I said earlier, each PC trainee like myself has been assigned a home to live in with a local family. There are a total of 12 trainees living in the village of Paunagisu in North Efate. I have grown very close to this group of folks. And my “Mama Nellie” and “Papa John” have been so wonderful to me. I have 2 Bratas (brothers) that also live in the same house – Dedier and Phillip. There are various other family members that come and go, but live elsewhere. The house is simple – cement block for about 4 feet, then wood. The roof is corrugated metal as are the majority of roofs. Thatched roofs are also common but more often in meeting areas in the village.

Language is still the biggest limiting factor in my interactions. It is very frustrating because the majority of the time my family speaks among themselves they use “local language.” There are over 100 local languages in Vanuatu. Sometimes they change from one village to the next. When people of two areas that have different languages want to communicate they fall back on Bislama, the “almost” universal language of Vanuatu. In some remote areas the people will ONLY speak their local language and not know Bislama. Also many people will know English or French depending on which island or area they are from. In the schools they only use English or French again, depending on where the school is located. It is all quite complex.

Bislama itself is a very strange “language.” To me it seems a very poorly structured language with many English verbs simply changed by adding an “em” at the end. Sometimes I feel like I am speaking just like the American Indians did in the old US Westerns: Yu wanem makem wan sling? You want to make a sling-shot? It can be very amusing, but also very frustrating if you try to over analyze it.

So what happened during the last 2 weeks? The general routine is that each morning we have about 2 hours of Bislama class. Most of this is incredibly boring. We generally read right out of a language book. Then we take turns making fools out of ourselves by trying to make sentences. With only one exception we are all stumbling through this training. One student who just happens to know some Arabic and French as well seems to have grasped Bislama quite quickly.

Afternoons are sometimes free to study or go about town learning more about village life and Vanuatu culture. Many times some of the PC Trainees will head to the beach to read and work on things. I always have to fight to resist the temptation because it means that I will fall back on speaking English and not practicing. It is a tough decision because I enjoy chatting with my fellow trainees and sharing stories. In Bislama they call it “storian” time.

On Wednesdays and Fridays we travel to another nearby village to meet up with the other Peace Corps folks. There we have presentations by current volunteers, staff members and some government officials on a variety of topics. For the most part these are fairly laughable. I know the PC will not be happy with me saying this, but many of the presentations seem to be targeted at 6th grade elementary kids. They are poorly presented and often the speaker is simply reading a printed set of PowerPoint slides. The most interesting and useful training has been in Health matters and Safety such as natural disasters, etc. Again it’s not rocket science, but it is good to hear about what to do if, for instance, a cyclone is on its way.

The weekends continue to be the most valuable in terms of learning. There is ample time to get involved in some community or church activity. Yes, you read that right. I have been going to church! The church my family attends is an Evangelical Church. It is probably the last place that I would choose to go. But in the interest of supporting my family and fitting in with the culture I choose to attend. It is not ALL bad. In fact the music and singing is quite beautiful. It seems almost everyone here that I have met can sing. Their voices have a deep incredible richness and they harmonize beautifully.

News of even the most minor village happenings travels around faster than it seems possible. If I go for a walk on the beach one day, someone in another village where the other Peace Corps trainees are will know about it before the day is out. In a way this is good because the village works as a team to resolve issues or problems. If there is a problem in your family, everyone knows about, everyone talks about it and eventually it all sorted out. The drawback for us westerners here is that we feel that it is impossible to get some private space. Everything we do is scrutinized and known about. It doesn’t help that white people here stand out like a sore thumb. Tourists DO come here, but not that often. If a white person is walking around it is either a tourist or a Peace Corps volunteer or staff. There are a few exceptions. Janet is a British woman that lives in a nice small house right on the beach. She came here 40 years ago as a volunteer for some aid organization and never left.

Many people here are very musical and as I said can sing well. Consequently there are many “string bands” which consist of guitar players, bass players and some percussionists. The local string band in this village has taken an interest in me once they found out I have a way of recording video (on my camera) and recording music (on my mp3 player). This evening I hope to get a chance to record the whole group in a local church. It should be a blast.

One concept one picks up on quick here in Vanuatu is that if someone says they will do something at say 7pm this evening, the real time could be 8, 9, the next day, next week or never. No one is very concerned about hard fast schedules, at least not in the villages. It is called “aelan taem” (island time) here. It takes some getting used to and it is rather refreshing coming from the hectic pace of American life. So if the recording of the local string band does not happen this evening it will be no shock to me.

Going back a minute to my first week here in this village…myself and 2 other PC trainees were asked to get up in front of the church and say a few things to the locals. At first I was a bit nervous but it worked out well. The pastor asked a few simple questions about why I was here, what work I was going to do, did I have a family back in the US, etc. Towards the end of the questioning I had mentioned that in addition to computer skills I could also do some simple construction. This caught the attention of the pastor. He talked to me after and wanted me to help with some work on a church in a nearby town. I happily agreed and volunteered my friend Brian who really DOES know how to build stuff.

That led to one of the most bizarre and also enjoyable days so far in Vanuatu. It is a story that Brian and I have repeated several times and it gets funnier each time. Maybe this is because we keep remembering different funny little things that occurred. But you will have to read my next entry to get the story, because it deserves a blog entry all its own.

So to wrap up this entry I will say that the Nakamal is beginning to turn into a weekly ritual. Friday evenings many of us volunteers make it to one Nakamal or another to have a shell and storian. We are beginning to blend more with the locals. I understand now what a previous Vanuatu volunteer, Chris, said about the kava experience. He said that if you hang with the local men and share a few shells with them, they will take you in like you are their brother. There are several men that I see each week that are becoming good friends.

Friday – morning classes, afternoon trip to first home in North Efate town of Paunagisu.Friday of week one warrants a place in the journal of week 2 since it is the beginning day of our 7-week Community Based Training or CBT (yet another acronym). In this phase our group of 40 PCV’s are split into 4 groups of 10. Each group is assigned a village in North Efate. In this village each of the volunteers are assigned a family that you will live and learn from for the next 7 weeks. In addition there are 2 language trainers that join each group and also stay with a family in the same village. These 2 trainers will help us continue our Bislama training. Our group is lucky enough to have Joy, a sweet large woman with a perpetual smile and Graham a young handsome man from a nearby island. To be honest all the trainers seem to be magnificent people. They are so willing to spend extra time with anyone who has questions or needs help.

Our bus made the trip to Paunagisu in a couple of hours. The main road we took to the village of 700 or so people was newly paved. We learned that the US had built this road during WWII. We had also built an airstrip out in this end of the island. Though it was never really an official base for US troops many stopped here. Along the nicely paved road we caught several glimpse of incredible beaches of white sand and bluish-green water as well as giant banyan trees. The flora definitely reminded me of Costa Rica – very green and lush - tropical plants everywhere.

End of week 1…end on a high note – Friday interacting with the local men at Nakamal. Saturday – make trip to Takara with Papa to work on Church construction. Sunday visit Onesua School to look at computer lab…end up spending 4 hours waiting for ride back, but caught ride with Brata Alick who spotted me waiting in the dark with other friends.

The Nakamal is literally translated as a “meeting place” but it is where people come in the evenings to drink kava and chill out. It is usually fairly quiet as those drinking are becoming slowly sedated by this very unpleasant drink. The basics are these: one enters the “bar” area to order a “shell.” Traditionally this was a half coconut shell filled with the kava drink. Now it is usually a glass bowl that is given to the customer. You can order a 50, 100 or 200 shell. Once you place your order the man behind the bar will use a ladle to fill your shell with a dull green milky substance. You take the shell outside, stand with others, back away from the bar and down the entire amount in one gulp. For some this is followed with lots of spitting, even an occasional regurgitation of the awful stuff. It is a good idea to wash out your mouth with water right afterwards. The taste of the liquid is very bitter as one may expect from drinking a ground up root. The payoff comes a short time later as you get a numbing sensation in your lips and the stress in your body seems to flow out of you. The feeling is maybe close to a cross between extremely mild ecstasy with a taste of cocaine. Depending on your mood and how much you can pretend to “like” the taste you may have 1, 2 or many more shells. But rest assured you, may need help walking home. I have experienced issues with walking home after only 2 – 100 vatu shells.

So on this Friday evening several PC volunteers arrived en masse at the local Nakamal to enjoy another night out. We all order the first drink and hung out together exclaiming our hatred for the horrific taste of the stuff. But after I picked up my second shell I noticed that there was space near many of the locals to sit or stand and enjoy the mellow feeling. I purposely walked over to that area to drink and then began talking to the local men. Kava drinking is primarily an activity for the men of Vanuatu, though you will occasionally see a woman or 2. But this small gesture of moving to integrate myself with the locals proved to be an important moment into my acceptance into the local crowd. I met 4 new friends that I would have missed out on had I stayed in my PC circle. The significance was again reinforced when my Papa told me many days later that one of the men noticed what I had done and was quite pleased. He said this without me ever mentioning the event to him. I may need much more help with the Bislama, but I at least learned a few things about body language that helps with cultural integration.

It has been so difficult to find time to write during this first week. We are kept very busy up until the generator for the lights goes out at 9:30 pm. That is about the time I lie in bed with my mosquito net and try to type a few words on the computer. Then because of my limited battery life in this POS laptop I have, I usually run out of juice. Since there is only one, that’s right 1 outlet in the entire building for 18 guys, it is tricky to schedule the 4-5 hours it takes to re-charge my computer.

We are living in a “barracks” that is full of 2-level wooden bunk beds. Each bed is equipped with PC issued mattress bad, pillow and mosquito net. This is our temporary home for only one week. After this we are split up into groups of 8-9 people and sent off to live in a village with a family for 7 weeks. This next step is to further immerse you into the language and culture of this country. At the end of that time we return to our original site to get our final assignments.

So far our days have consisted of daily training starting at 8 am. We have discussed core values and expectations for PCV’s, medical issues, safety and language. In between we are treated with wonderful food cooked by the “mama’s” of the local village. The food is much more tasty than we were led to believe it would be. We have had many types of local fruits, some fresh and some baked. The most interesting is called “lap-lap” which is made from any of various root plants such as taro, manioc and others. It was served to us today in flattened squares that were baked in an underground oven. Yum!! Steamed rice, yams, taro and other root vegetables are served for most lunches and dinners. Breakfast is usually simply slices of bread with peanut butter, Nutella or jam.

During the day on Tuesday, half of our group of 40 made a trip into Port Vila to attend some interviews with the Country Director as well as the medical team. I received 4 more shots that were required but that I had not needed before my invitation. I also received malaria medication, which I need to start taking the next day. Many of us visited the Peace Corps office and lounge. The lounge was packed with current volunteers that appeared to be a bit overwhelmed at the arrival of 20 or so new people. Thanks to a friend of a friend in California (Chris and volunteer who recently left Vanuatu to return home) I was prepared with gifts of chocolate for the volunteers. This went over quite well. All of the volunteers eagerly gobbled up the peanut butter cups and Kit-Kat bars as if they had not eaten anything in weeks. It was a fun surprise for them. Apparently you can’t get “good” chocolate in Vanuatu.

In the lounge I struggled with using the Internet. With so many volunteers all in the office at once sharing the bandwidth of our 2 connections, the speed was somewhat pathetic. There is one connection for the 4 desktop computers and one for any wireless laptops, which numbered about 10 at that time. But I did have time to upload some blog text and only 18 of my 70 photos. Hence the entry about limited access on my previous post.

Tuesday evening included a trip to the Country Director’s house or CD. You enter the grounds through a narrow metal gate near the road and descend down a windy road to an expansive staircase leading to the front door. The home is beautifully and tastefully adorned with artwork from various South Pacific locales. From the front entry you can see clear through the house to the incredible view of the bay down below. We were lucky to arrive just as the sun was setting over the bay and was lighting up the scattering of sailboats in the water. Many of the current volunteers in Vanuatu were there to greet us. Eddie came into the main house and greeted everyone to his home. He then invited us out to the front of the house where the expansive staircase winds up to the driveway. Everyone gathered on the steps and faced back towards the house. A few of the volunteers explained the much talked about local ritual of drinking kava. Kava is made from a tropical plant of the pepper family. It has a sedative effect on the mind and a repulsive reaction from the stomach. It is not uncommon that frequent kava drinkers throw-up after taking a “shells” worth of kava. The shells they use are really coconut shells. There are various sizes of shells that are consumed by drinkers of kava depending on how much of an effect is desired.

Another interesting bit of trivia about kava is that it is generally consumed in kava bars or “Nakamals.” It is primarily a drinking event partaken only by the men of villages. In some islands women are not even allowed to walk near a Nakamal. The general routine is the men gather at the bar, pick up their shells, and face away from the bar then down their shot. What follows is typically lots of spitting of bits of kava root that were taken in the mouth from the bottom of the shell. Quite often these bars are fairly subdued as far as noise. Apparently loud noises are very annoying to those under the influence of kava.

Following the description of the ritual we went up 4 at a time to drink a shell of kava. I was in the first group. It tasted very similar to the kava that I had ordered on the Internet. I tried making some back in California before leaving for Vanuatu. It has a bitter, unpleasant taste. Almost immediately you can feel numbness around your lips and tongue. Then there is a strange sensation in the back of your throat that gives you the feeling like you want to cough up something. This is why all the spitting and hacking occurs.

For me there was not much more of an effect of the one shell. Dirk and I discussed this back in the house. We decided one was not enough and went out for a second shell. The taste was pretty much the same. The effect was quite different. Slowly a feeling of drunkenness came over me. It was nothing like any buzz that I have had before. It was more pleasant than alcohol. It seemed to affect my entire body, but my mind was clear enough for me to carry on with conversations and seem fairly coherent.-That's all for week one. So many more stories, but no time to write...

Just so you know...I am now into the thick of the first 3 months of training here in Vanuatu. Unfortunately this means that my time that I will have available to update this blog is very limited!! Not only that, my access to the Internet is extremely limited at least for the next few weeks. So if you don't see updates for while here, don't worry. I have NOT been carried off by the natives and thrown into a volcano or anything crazy like that.

More later...

Cruising at a little over 10,000 meters somewhere above some tiny islands in the middle of the South Pacific, I am listening to U2’s Joshua Tree on my mp3 player thinking about my friend Danielle who is touring with U2 in Europe. We just passed over the International Dateline, so September 11th has vanished into thin air – literally no 9/11 for me this year. Somehow that seems very appropriate and even a bit relieving.

Way back on 9/8 as Fay drove me to the Sacramento Airport to start this adventure for real, I was feeling physically ill. I’m certain it was nothing that ate, but rather mostly caused by the anxiety of leaving all my friends and family behind AND would I be able to handle the new foods I would be eating, could I learn the language, how would I handle the heat/earthquakes/humidity/culture. Would all my younger Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) be accepting of this old fart trying to rough it in Vanuatu. Logically told myself that everything would be fine, but my insides felt differently. It was somewhat similar to that feeling when I jumped out of an airplane – with a parachute and an instructor attached to me, of course. Those first few seconds out of the plane, my legs involuntarily started moving as if I was able to hop on some invisible bicycle to get myself back into the plane. The instructor got a big laugh out of it, but I was terrified. My logical side kept telling me the whole time before and after that point of no return that I would be ok. Didn’t matter to my legs.

The trip to the LAX Raddison was thankfully short. I checked in and headed for the lobby to hang out and search for other perspective PCV’s. There were several messages on the Peace Corps/Vanuatu Facebook page from people in my group of 40 volunteers that said to meet downstairs after check-in. I arrived earlier than most, so expected to wait. But my nerves started getting the best of me. I needed to at least talk to someone to feel connected, to share anxieties about the trip and to just know I am not alone in the nervousness. As I grabbed some food to eat in the lobby bar, I started scoping out hotel guests that looked to me like PCV’s. I gave up after the third group of people. None of them were PCV’s – now I was feeling stupid as well as anxious.

Finally a woman overheard me talking on the phone about Vanuatu and she said my son is going. Hence, Andrew finally became my first contact with our group. During the registration a few hours later, I would meet many more folks all struggling to fill out the last little bits of paperwork. Then after returning to my room briefly I met my roommate, Zack, a “mixed-gas” scuba diving instructor and perpetual world traveler from Colorado. Then I headed back down to the bar to meet more folks.

The group at our group of tables grew to about 15 people. Thankfully I had a preview of many faces because of the Facebook group. I was able to memorize most of the names, but the hometowns continue to get mixed up in my head. We have Dirk (our unofficial leader, since he has done this before in Malaysia), Carla, Jane, Melissa (who I feel a great connection with already because we exchanged many emails and phone calls after reading each others blog), Meagan, Katherine, Ron and Don, Eric (who I saw in the elevator – I suspected Peace Corps, but I was afraid to get embarrassed once more if he was not, so kept silent), Jason and Gaie (one of the 2 couples in our group), Michael, Kathy, Heather and a few more.

Almost everyone drank beer, which seemed surprising to me for some reason. But after a few cool ones the conversation turned quite lively. It was such an incredible relief to here so many of the same stories of over packing/under packing and what the heck is my project anyway? The Peace Corps informs you of your project when you are officially invited. But they keep it decidedly vague. Partly this is because only the people in the actual country know the real details of what will be needed. And also they want you to stay focused on service to the country you are going to and not the details of what you will be doing. Much of the details get sorted in out in what they call Pre-Service Training of PST. They like acronyms – it’s the government after all.

We flash forward now to September 10th for a one-day orientation with some Peace Corps staff people from Washington. Monica, Jeff and Jessica led us through several “ice-breaking” activities and review of Peace Corps core expectations. For the most part there was not much new here for me. The best part was getting to know even more names and faces, which I’m sure was the whole point of the orientation.

In the early evening of the 10th we loaded into 2 buses and made our way to airport terminal to face the long arduous trip to Vanuatu. Our first quick test came as one of our group leaders learned that the buses dropped us off at the wrong terminal. We were flying United/operated by New Zealand Air. I don’t really know what that means and apparently our staff from Washington was not certain either. Fortunately we were all PCV’s and part of our orientation and training to this point is to be flexible and expect the unexpected. We made the long trek with all our belongings to the New Zealand Air terminal and managed to get all checked in. It was quite a site seeing 40 people with tons of crap trying to navigate through parking lots and crosswalks, bags falling off the wheeled carts as we ran into uneven pavement.

The 13-hour flight from LA to Aukland, New Zealand was pleasantly uneventful. I was fortunate enough to get an aisle seat with an empty seat next to me so I could spread out. Each seat on the 747-400 had it’s own video screen. I skipped threw a few music selections and music videos before settling on “The A-Team” movie. It was pretty bad, but a least a little entertaining. After that and 2 Nyquil pills I managed to fall asleep. I got practically 6 good hours of sleep.

We had a very short 1-hour layover in New Zealand and headed for our final destination – Port Vila, Vanuatu on the Island of Efate (pronounced “eh-fah-tay”). This island would be our temporary home for the first 3 months while we trained to become full-blown Peace Corps Volunteers.

My first impression as the plane neared some islands south of Efate is that this REALLY is out away from everything. The islands are very heavily wooded and green thanks to regular rainfall. Several islands, of the 83 that make up the archipelago, have volcanoes on them. 9 of these are currently active. I could not see any of these volcanoes from the air. As the plane descended towards the airport the water became more visible. It is a bright green/blue hue blending cleanly into white sandy beaches. It is just as I imagined from seeing pictures of Fiji, which is only 500 miles due East of Vanuatu.

The 747 cruised into the little airport and the stairs were pushed over to the giant plane to help all of us out and into a new fantastic world. The air was quite moist but not too hot. It was maybe 85 degrees as we stepped off onto the pavement.

Customs was relatively quick. As we walked toward the outer doors of the airport we could hear cheering. I thought for sure it was for someone else. But once I got outside there was a greeting line about 40 people long. The country director, Ed Stice, was first to shake everyone’s hand. Then we followed down the long line of current volunteers and PC staff to get hellos and hugs. We were all given a sarong to wrap around us and a lei for our necks. It was a moment that was very memorable and touching for us all.

We took group pictures then headed for our new home for week 1 of our adventure.

It is just a short 10 hours before my plane leaves for LA and I start this crazy adventure for real. I am finally done with the goodbyes, many tearful. My bags are 10 lbs over the 80 lb limit, but I am too tired to try and figure out what to leave behind. I should just go to sleep, but I have too much running through my mind to sleep just yet. So why not write on my blog and say a few things.

One thing that really struck me these last few weeks is how many friends I have that really care about me. It feels good to see that so many people made an effort to wish me well. On the other hand I don't really enjoy the final goodbye. I prefer it to be over quickly, but that is not always what other people prefer.

As I say goodbye to all my friends and family, I am saying hello to a whole new group of friends that will be part of the 41 new volunteers traveling to LA tomorrow to meet for orientation. Many of us have communicated via e-mail, Facebook and even phone. I look forward to meeting all these folks and sharing in the trials of getting adjusted to a new part of the world. It seems surprising that there are 41 new volunteers all going at the same time to Vanuatu. But I am quite relieved because we can all lean on each other for support.

This evening included one last trip to the store and a sushi dinner! Some of the last minute items I picked up included Reeses Peanut Butter Cups (recommended by Chris a Returning Volunteer from Vanuatu), a battery for a watch I have not worn in 10 years and quick-dry towels. Just a note - I set the watch to Vanuatu time!

Time to close for now because I have to at least pretend to go to sleep. Much more interesting events to report as the days go by. Be well!!

There is less than 2 weeks left before I hop on that plane in LA and head towards Vanuatu. My good friends here in Santa Cruz have had some nice parties for me. I have also had many smaller gatherings with people I know I will not see for 2 years. Inevitably the end of our time together is an embrace and heartfelt feelings of sadness. I'm not very good at goodbyes.

I know I will see you again, my friends, someday. But I want someday to come sooner than 2 years.

Lately I started asking my friends what they think THEY will be doing in 2 years. I'm trying to get an image of the future when I return here. I know I will be going into sort of a reverse culture shock. But what will you be doing?? Write me a comment. Be serious, or not...up to you.

As much as I hate facebook, it has given me a chance to connect with several other volunteers that will be on their way to Vanuatu with me. The information sharing has been very valuable. We all seem to be sharing the same sense of panic and excitement.

My days are filled with sorting out stuff I have been dragging around for years. It is refreshing to just throw most of it in the trash. Makes me think about why I carried it around for so long. I'm getting close to doing a "trial" packing of my suitcases. I'm concerned that I will not be able to keep the weight of the 2 bags to 80 lbs. Maybe I will ship some of it to myself.

Speaking of shipping/mailing stuff to me. I have included my mailing address on the main blog page. If you want to send anything use this address. Packages can take 3-4 weeks to reach me. And don't send anything too valuable, since there is a bit of risk that it may not make it.

Well I must go and prepare for yet another goodbye BBQ. I have another tomorrow with my softball team. Party on!

It was April 5th, 2009 that I clicked on the “submit” button on the Peace Corps website. This little button would send various bits of information about my life to an office somewhere in Washington. Some recruiters would look at it first and decide if I was an appropriate candidate to join as a volunteer.

Last week I finally got the answer 9 days short of 16 months later. YES!! I have been invited to join the Peace Corps and serve 2 years in Vanuatu (pronounced: van-oo-ah-too) helping them with an IT technology project. They gave me only 7 days to respond, but in retrospect it makes sense since most people will have decided even before they get the invitation. So after sleeping on it for one day, I accepted the invitation!! I will be leaving on September 13th after a 3-day orientation somewhere in the U.S.

There are many people to thank for their support directly and indirectly. First and foremost, my family (Fay, Gabe and Maya) has been very supportive of my efforts. Though it will be hard to not see them for 2 years (unless they come and visit), I will carry them to the South Pacific in my heart. And ALL my friends, especially Kaine, Liesl, Robbie and Anita who wrote recommendations for me and provided constant support as I complained about the lengthy application process.

So many of you may be wondering...where is Vanuatu? Unless you are a big fan of the reality show, Survivor (one season took place on one of the islands there), or you have traveled to the South Pacific, you may have never heard of this country.

Quoting directly from the Peace Corps Welcome Book:

"Vanuatu is an independent republic consisting of 83 islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It is located about 3,500 miles southeast of Hawaii and about 1,500 miles northeast of Australia. The capital and largest city is Port Vila, located on the island of Efaté. From the late 19th century until it gained independence in 1980, Vanuatu was governed jointly by France and Great Britain."

The languages used there are English, French and a pidgin English called Bislama. There are also over 100 distinct languages used throughout the country. The national language of unity is Bislama. It will be the one which I will have to become familiar with. Here is a taste:

English: Good afternoon. What is your name?

Bislama: Gud Aftanun, wanem nem blong yu?

English: I am so happy to meet you.

Bislama: Mi glad tumas blong mitum yu.

This should be fun, right? I can't imagine I will have much need to use this language anywhere else in the world, though.

Well on to what I will be doing there...After a 3 month training/evaluation period, I will be assigned a post that could range from teaching young kids computer skills to setting up a computer lab to developing curriculum for a school in one of the cities or villages. There are only 2 cities of any size there: Port Vila and Luganville. Most other cities are small in size. The majority of the population lives in rural areas. It is uncertain where I will end up residing until I complete the training period.

So now is the time to get all my affairs in order to be out of the country for 27 months. It is surprising how many things you have to take care of before you leave. My to-do list keeps getting longer instead of shorter.

This blog will be my way of keeping family and friends informed of what I am doing, though I do not yet know how often I will have access to the Internet. I will do my best to be regular at posting updates.

Finally if there is anything specifically you would like to know about, please drop me a note here or at my old gmail address.

Hi Friends and Family,

Some of you may be upset at me for not writing more frequently. Your feelings are certainly understood. If I were you I would imagine…”what is this guy been up to for the last 6 weeks or so since he last sent an email or posted something on his blog?”

I suppose you want a straightforward answer? Well I don’t have any! But I will try to tell you of some of my adventures and misadventures.

I believe the last time I wrote, I was struggling with boredom, some insecurity of what in the hell I was doing here and what my retirement life should look like. If I didn’t explain that in my last blog, just take my word for it…that’s what I was struggling with.

So things changed quite dramatically when a good friend arrived to spend 10 days vacationing with me and soothing my frustrations with my attempts to get a house built. It was a very pleasant change of pace. We traveled about Costa Rica to some places I had been and a few I had not been to. I must say things were quite nice for that short visit. Then she left! Reality of dealing with an unfinished house with 8 guests arriving in a little over a week struck me hard.

As people will tell you over and over an over ad nauseum here, “don’t sweat it” or “ it will work out” or “it is what it is” or “Pura Vida”, blah, blah, blah. Well the time came and went for the crowd of 8 more visitors and guess what? It worked ok! There were a few hitches here and there. We had no kitchen faucets or drain, but I rigged up something that worked.

So lesson learned…”it WILL work out.” But did I really learn the lesson? Here I am almost ready to return to the US and I am stressing about the fact that I have one mattress that was incorrectly ordered by the builder, a dishwasher not hooked up because I can’t find the right adapter, a dryer which was DOA (Dead On Arrival), and a stove that is too big (the dishwasher door bangs into it if you open it up. Oh, and I forgot to mention, my main electric feed to the house is still not connected. I’m running off of Peter, the builder’s electric service, which happens to be feeding 4 other houses!! Oh, and the grey water from the house goes into the storm drain on the road, which even though it is technically illegal, everyone here does it.

Ah but here I am at 9:15 in the evening sitting on a perch about 500 feet above the ocean watching the partial full moon rise, glistening in a silver streak across the ocean as it stretches towards me. The stars are starting to fade as the moon overcomes their brightness.

Who am I to complain? I’m just that way. I want things done right! I am working on a more eco-friendly drain system. The mattress/appliance people will be out early next week. So, I’m guessing here, but “things will work out.” Is it just human nature or “my nature” to not be satisfied even though in comparison to the rest of the world, I am living pretty damn well?

My son, Gabe, has been a huge help. He has helped me in numerous translations that would have been nearly impossible to accomplish without him. Try getting electric service account setup here without understanding very much Spanish! Gabe is leaving in a couple of days to head back down to Southern Costa Rica to finish up some research for his school work. I will miss him a great deal.

So let me back up a few weeks…back in December 24th to be exact, I picked up Fay and Maya at the airport in San Jose. We took the now WAY too familiar trip from San Jose to Montezuma by way of the Puntareanas Ferry (the rental car was loaded with stuff for the house. This was a routine I was to repeat 4 times with various visitors…spend one night in San Jose, shop for house stuff, pick them up at the airport, drive to Montezuma). It was great to see them. We had a fun trip, but the togetherness was short-lived. That same evening our friends from Napa, the Yip’s, arrived by boat from San Jose by way of Jaco. I picked them up in Montezuma on the beach after a choppy ride across the Gulf of Nicoya.

We had a grand time adjusting to our new house with its peculiar problems, but enjoying each other’s company. The next day, I had to drag one “volunteer” with me to pick up Gabe and his girlfriend, Kelsey somewhere between the Liberia Airport up north and Montezuma. This would be a road trip that would end up being a lasting memory in all our lives.

Julie graciously volunteered to make the trek to pick up Gabe and Kelsey. We gleaned as much info as possible from the Internet and friends advice to figure out how to pick them up. They made it a little easier by making part of the trip south down to Nicoya. We were not quite sure how long it would take to get to Nicoya, but our best guess was 3 hours drive.

Julie and I made our way through the nearby town of Cobano. As we turned right toward the East we saw a woman probably in her late 30’s hitchhiking for a ride. It was Christmas Day and I knew very few if any buses were running. She looked harmless, so I suggested we pick her up. Julie agreed.

We struggled to understand our new rider who spoke only Spanish. We got that she wanted to go to Paquera, the ferry town that was one of the routes up to get Gabe and Kelsey. After much discussion, which was, quite confusing she told us the best way to get to Nicoya was through Paquera. I was skeptical that she told us this because it would get her to Paquera. In hindsight, she was correct. She also said that it would take about 4 hours to get to Nicoya!! This caused quite a bit of anxiety on my part since I had learned from a phone call that Gabe and Kelsey were already in Nicoya!! We decided to push on with our plan to travel through Paquera to get up to Nicoya.

As expected we ran into some rough dirt roads along the northern route to retrieve Gabe and Kelsey. However, we were quite relieved when we began to run into more asphalt roads than we expected. Some 3 hours later we pulled into Nicoya and found a very tired Gabe and Kelsey hanging out in a park in the center of town. After a quite unusual dinner at a Chinese restaurant, we headed back down south toward Montezuma.

Julie and I reviewed our map and guessed that we could save some time by taking a more “direct” route across “highway 162” back towards Montezuma. Julie is an exceptional navigator and correctly picked the road that was to be the beginning of an unforgettable crazy adventure.

As we pulled off the main road on to “highway 162” and immediately had to cross a small stream, I became skeptical. I convinced Julie that we should return to the intersection with the main road to verify with the local folks hanging out at the corner that this was the right way to go. I understood little of what was said, but I did get something about 5 rivers and a mountain. Gabe translated that we were in fact on the “highway.” It crosses 5 different rivers (small) and takes you over a small mountain.

We were on our way. The first river was more like a stream. The road continued to get windier as it made its way up the mountain. It was probably a good thing that it was dark, since we were probably following the edge of a steep canyon. We were all very tired but somehow we were all in good spirits. Gabe and Kelsey were quite excited by the adventure. Julie seemed tentative, but was dutifully paying attention to the map and any road signs of upcoming towns. I was tired, but enjoying the roller coaster ride through uncharted areas.

We passed through some very small farming towns. One had quite a bit of action, which appeared to be a rodeo or some other fiesta. It was strange to see so many people suddenly appear after traveling on dark roads for hours.

The small white signs with black lettering indicated how far the next town was down the road. It was fortunate that they were there because the map we were using did not have enough detail for these small roads. We wound our way through farmlands, small towns and long stretches of darkness. We all wished we could see what we were passing.

The small town of San Francisco was a relief to find. We knew now that we needed to start heading south towards Rio Negro. This would get us very close to Cobano and a hard paved road. This new direction would also get much more nerve-racking.

So far we crossed our 5 rivers as the local friends of ours indicated. We had 5 more to go!! The first few were pretty easy to get across. Then came the first really BIG river. It was probably 3 meters wide and in the dark it was impossible to tell the depth. Gabe, the brave adventurer, dug his high rubber boots out of the back of the car, took his machete out and began to ford the river on foot. We watched from the shore partly laughing at the crazy gringo in the river with a machete. He walked across as if prepared for a giant boa constrictor to grab him around the leg! Fortunately the water was not even a foot deep. He headed back to the car and we headed into the river.

Piece of cake! The trusty 4WD made it across easily and up the other bank. We trudged on through more rough roads. They seemed to get smaller and more precarious. The trusty white and black signs still told us we were on the right track.

We came upon another large river. Again we needed Gabe to navigate before the car would make the trip. This one was a little deeper and faster running. However it looked fairly easy as long as we followed the path that Gabe laid out for us. I slowly stepped on the gas. The water rose along the side of the car along with my heart rate. It was really quiet in the car for a few seconds. Then as the car began to rise from the opposite bank we all breathed a sigh of relief. Another success story…

We were getting close to Rio Negro; our trusty signs indicated another turn. The road narrowed quite a bit and descended into a darkened canyon. I hit the brakes as I saw the biggest river we had yet encountered. The opposite bank did not appear to have any road. Was this a dead end? I drove up and down the bank to see if I could make out another way across. Nothing! Not wanting to push our luck I suggested we turn back to the last intersection and see if there was another way around. Everyone agreed.

We started back up the canyon road and soon encountered a small pick-up. It appeared full of maybe 6 people. Gabe asked about the crossing of the river. The local dude laughed and motioned up the river. Gabe said he wanted us to follow him. So we turned back to see where he was going to go.

We watched as his pickup appeared as though it was going to get swamped over the bottoms of the door. His engine struggled to pull the weight of the passengers. He went straight across the river, then to our amazement turned downstream. He continued for a while, then a while longer and we were wondering if the river WAS the road. Finally he made a turn to the right up onto the riverbank and waited for us to follow.

I held my breath (metaphorically speaking) and headed for the opposite bank. Quite surprisingly my car did not hesitate like our friend’s. We reached the other bank, made the right turn and up the opposite bank. We traveled for probably 50-60 yards or so in the river. We zoomed by our new friends and yelped a big thank you as we went by. They were just as delighted as we were.

The remainder of the trip was boring in comparison. We made it to Rio Negro and then on to Cobano without passing any more rivers. All in all it took us about 3 hours to return to the villa, about the same amount of time it took us to get up to Nicoya. We did not save any time, but we had a great time with 10 total river crossings! This was a Christmas night that few of us would forget.

To the day after Christmas and beyond…

Click here to hear tropical rain falling on a metal roof

Click here to hear crickets at nightime

Click here to hear one of the hard working laborers singing in the shower (no wise cracks, OK?)

It’s been a few days since I last wrote, so I’m not sure what you missed. Last evening was quite exciting. While I was watching another Planet Earth episode (oddly it happened to be about “Fresh Water”) I heard an incredibly load roaring noise that I could not place. I knew as soon as I paused the movie what it was. The skies opened up and it was pouring extremely hard. Most of the homes including the one I was in have roofs made of metal. Some are insulated underneath to keep the racket down when it rains. This one did not have anything in the section over the front deck. When I opened the door to go outside the volume increased by at least 2 times. It was almost deafening. On top of this there was a light show going on that lit up the sky every few minutes. It was odd that some of the lighting flashes were not followed by thunder. I’m not quite sure how that can happen, but it was fun to watch. Earlier in the evening I saw lots of lighting flashes across the ocean and probably somewhere near the Osa Peninsula in Southern Costa Rica. I was guessing that this was probably more than 100 miles away. I did not expect it to come this way. It is quite difficult to see where the weather comes from here. It is almost as if it is created as the upper air shifts around. The clouds are amazing to watch as they change throughout the day.

The morning air was thick with the humidity from the evaporating moisture on the ground. It was a welcome relief to still have mostly clouds in the sky. Had it been sunny it would have felt like a steam room outside. I had breakfast and waited to hear if Peter and Jennifer were stirring at their house. After some time I got impatient and decided to head into town. I new this was going to be an exciting trip with the previous night’s rain making a mess of the roads.

My 4-wheel drive rental car paid for itself in that one 8 km trip to Cobano. The first km was the only part that really worried me. My car careened down the worst of the big hills spinning to the left and right as it slithered over the slick mud. I did the best I could to steer into the turn and ease up on the gas. Fortunately I did not slip off the main part of the road and I found myself cruising over the bridge where the creek that I explored a few days ago was roaring by. The rest of trip was a piece of cake.

In town I spent an hour or so on the Internet. I needed to also figure out where to purchase a network cable of at least 110 meters. I measured the distance from my neighbor’s house the day before using my GPS. I had prepared myself for this purchase by writing down the words for “computer” and “network” and “cable” as well as “110”. I brought my short computer cable in case “show-and-tell” would work.

The pleasant young lady, who was starting to get to know me since I kept coming in every couple of days, knew a bit of English, so I was hopeful I could get some info. I said as I pulled out the short blue cable: “nessicito una cable grande” She asked her partner across the room and he said some number really fast. She repeated it and then wrote down “600.” I correctly guessed that she meant per meter. She calculated that it would cost about $120 for the entire length of cable. I pointed to the connectors on the end and asked if they included them (in English). She said yes. I grimaced at the price tag, stalled a little and then asked (again in English) if it would be OK for outside. She said yes, then “manana.” Despite the high price I went for it. This would give me a live Internet connection without having to by my own satellite equipment.

One major task out of the way, I headed for the bank. Banks here have a double door that allows only one person in at a time. I went into the first door. It closed and a voice said something about metal and the door to the bank remained close. I immediately realized that the laptop in my bag was probably detected and that was not good. I went back to lock the laptop in the car and returned. This time I got in. There was hardly anyone in the bank. This was a refreshing surprise. Sometimes you can spend hours in a bank waiting to get through the line. I sat at the chairs where you wait for clerks to help you with accounts. The man behind the desk in front of me waved me over. I asked if he could speak English. He waved his hand that indicated “sort of.” So I started by saying “cuenta” for account. He immediately says in perfect English: “Do you want to open an account?” I almost started laughing. I thought to myself that I wish my Spanish were as good as his English. I told him that I opened an account in “Grecia” but that the ATM card was sent here. Again I employed the show-and-tell by showing him my Wells Fargo ATM card. He pointed to another desk with two young ladies. As I walked to their desk, the friendly clerk called their extension and explained to them in Spanish what I wanted. All I needed to do was hand them my passport and I was done in a few minutes!!

I was feeling pretty good about myself even though my Spanish was quite lacking. It is nice to see the reaction from people here when you make a small effort to communicate in their native language. They seem much more willing to go the extra mile to help you out. I guess I would feel the same for someone in the US who knew little English.

As the day approached for my trip to Costa Rica I began to get a little nervous about the idea of being gone for nearly 3 months in a foreign country. It would have been a little different if I had got off my butt and learned a little bit of Spanish before my trip. But I did not - thinking that I would get by in the tourist-dominated Montezuma area of the Nicoya Peninsula.

The flight to San Jose, Costa Rica was pleasantly uneventful. The plane actually landed 15 minutes early. Getting through customs was also a breeze. I thought it rather strange that you are not put through customs in the US, but after you land in Costa Rica. Then came a short wait for luggage and then the dreaded walk through the “taxi driver gauntlet.” Right after take your bag through the final security check, there are 2 large sliding doors that you walk out through. On the other side of the doors, there are numerous taxi drivers who start grabbing your bags before you know what’s happening. Their trick is they bring your bags to their taxi and ask you where you are going before you have a chance to negotiate a price for your ride. Ordinarily one should go to the taxi booth and arrange your ride and price first. However, I had arranged a ride with my hotel. I scanned all of the people holding signs and did NOT see any that read “La Riviera” or my name. I fought off a few drivers who attempted to pry my bags from my hands. I told at least 10 different drivers “NO, no taxi!” I was starting to sweat as my body got used to the much more humid environment. Some of the sweat was no doubt due to my increasing anxiety that I still could not find a sign anywhere for my ride. Some sweat was also due to the fact that I was wearing a jean jacket for the plane flights. I peeled of the now damp jacket and tossed it over my bags.

As I stood near the building keeping my bags close, yet another driver came up to me and asked which hotel I was going to. He said, in broken English, he would look around for a hotel sign. He came back and told me they were not here. He said it was too late by pointing to his watch and shaking his head. It was only 10 pm, but the crowds from the planes that recently arrived were starting to thin out a bit. I finally asked “how much.” He said “15 dollars.” I did not initially respond but that sounded pretty expensive for a short taxi ride. I asked how far it was and he first said 10 miles. Then he told me it is was a 15-minute ride. I was skeptical, but still open to the idea.

Only a few more minutes went by and I decided to take him up on his offer. His car was pretty beat-up. One fan belt squealed as he stepped on the gas. It also shuttered when he switched from 1st to 2nd gear. Once out of the parking lot he made a call on his cell phone. Thoughts of his buddy on the other end meeting us somewhere so he could take away all my belongings raced through my head. I was relieved when I saw the lighted “La Riviera” sign up on the right. At least I made it to the hotel without incident.

First full day…met Jennifer and Peter…shopping for tile, appliances, and light fixtures. Met Scott and Pam, at Cuban restaurant.

Second day…rented a car in San Jose…met Peter for furniture shopping near Grecia, etc.

Third day…drove to Montezuma met Peter on the road in Punta Arenas. Scott, Peter and I took the ferry from P.A. to Paquera, and then drove to Cobano to eat late lunch. Finally drove to Montezuma to the first view of new house. Roads getting to new house are pretty crappy. No doubt this is due to the large amount of rains that fell the previous month. My first view of the house was a bit shocking. I expected it to look more like a house, but it looked a lot like a pile of cement blocks and cement stairways than a house. The inside was littered with piles of broken wood that were obviously part of the framing of the cement structures. But the view from the second floor is pretty astounding. When you look straight off the deck you are looking at the spot were the Pacific Ocean meets the Gulf of Nicoya. Slightly to the right you see a small island called “Cabuya.” Farther to the right are the deep green trees of the Cabo Blanco Reserve. This is a spectacular piece of land at the very tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. We wandered up one more floor to the master bedroom. This floor has an even better view in the same direction. It has a smaller cement deck that overlooks the bottom deck. The only defect in the view is the presence of electrical wires running up to the villas that surround the area. It is a small complaint given the overwhelming green and blue natural view beyond. There are no words that can bring justice to this vista. It must be seen in person to truly understand how amazing it is.

First night in Montezuma…Peter showed me to my temporary house (4 weeks). It is quite simple compared to the future villa. It is all on one floor, two bedrooms on opposite sides of a central bathroom. The “kitchen” is located completely outside surrounded by a bar island. The kitchen extends to a tiled deck area that looks out at a similar view to the villa only about 50 ft higher.

I needed to make the effort to drive to Montezuma because I told Geoff (the realtor) that I would call. I forgot how funky and hippie-like Montezuma center looked. The road was pretty bad. I had forgotten how bad it was last year when I was here. I found a phone, but quickly realized that I needed a phone card to use it. I parked the car and spent a few moments trying to look up how to say “phone card” in Spanish. I didn’t find it, but I remembered that “card” was translated to “carta” so I guessed that “carta de telephono” would be close to “telephone card.” I picked up a six-pack of Imperial, some milk and a box of granola. As I got to the register, I mustered up my nerve to ask for a carta de telephono. The checkout-girl knew exactly what I wanted and said something in amazing speed. I guessed (correctly) that she was asking “what amount?” So as she took out 3 different cards I picked the cheapest one, $10.

I exited with my new stash of goods and headed for the closest telephone. I rang up Geoff. He sounded surprised to hear me. I apologized for calling late (6:30 pm!!). He was already watching a movie, so getting together was out of the question. He was again surprised when I mentioned that I would be here to February. He asked me to call tomorrow to arrange a time to meet for dinner. He cut off the conversation quickly, which was OK by me. I did not want to bother him any longer than necessary. I headed back towards the house.

I decided to watch part of Ratatouille on my laptop. I liked it, but I was getting tired. I stopped the movie and played some music from my laptop. As it played I unpacked some stuff. I knew that I would be here around 4 weeks, so may as well get unpacked. I went to sleep rather early – 10 pm, I think. The sound of crickets and soft waves of the ocean was a welcome change from the traffic noises of the city. During the evening I woke up a few times. This gave me a chance to check out the night sky. WOW! I haven’t seen this many stars since my camping trip years ago in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. The moon was about one quarter full and in such a position that it looked like a pearly white soup bowl suspended in the sky. Later in the morning around 2:30 am, I checked once again outside. The stars were even more numerous AND brilliant. There was a gentle cool breeze blowing towards the ocean. It felt like an air conditioner vent over my shoulder.

I woke the next morning at 6 am to the sound of a howler monkey off in the distance and a flock of parrots who were perched on a tree just outside my window. The parrots sounded like they were arguing about something. I couldn’t tell if they were eating the leaves of the tree or eating some bugs off of the leaves. The racket was incredible. I went outside to sit on the deck and they all flew off at once to a lower tree. As I sat there, though they came back so I got to watch them up close. They were all brilliant green and about the size of a blue jay.

The sun shining through the clouds and bouncing off the sea sent a stream of beautifully filtered light toward the hills. I felt as though I could just sit in that one spot the whole day and be happy. But of course my stomach reminded me that it was time to eat. I made some tea and munched on granola from my perch 300ft above the ocean.

The day continued at its slow pace. Peter and Scott drove up to the house in the late morning. Peter greeted me with “Good morning, Senor Sandy Jean.” Now there is a funny story behind his comment. The day after I arrived at the ‘La Riviera” hotel, Jennifer and Peter confronted the gentleman at the front desk regarding the fact that they forgot to pick me up at the airport despite Jennifer’s several reminders (not to mention my 3 emails on the same topic). The man from behind the desk produced a sign that his driver was holding the night I arrived. It read “Sandy” above the name “Jean” and the “La Riveria” Hotel insignia. We all had a good laugh, with the exception of the man behind the counter. I think he took it somewhat personally. He did not seem to treat me as pleasantly after this little encounter.

Anyway…Peter and Scott delivered some chairs for my house as well as my light fixtures to store in the house I was staying at. After that short exercise, Peter brought me over to see Villa #2. It was great to actually see one of the homes similar to mine that was completed. It was nice, but nowhere near the view that I had. Then we went to Villa #1 to meet Jim and Lisa who were on their way to catch the ferry to Punta Arenas in a few minutes. We had enough time to talk to him about his business plans. Jim is getting a kayaking tour business started down in Sierpa on the Osa Peninsula. From the descriptions of the area it sounds like an amazing ecological wonder…rivers, national parks, ocean tide pools, mangrove forests on the coast, etc. This is Peters next major project. He has bought several pieces of property in this area. The plan is for the government of Costa Rica to build a major international airport only 5 minutes drive from this currently small town.

I spent a little time talking to Jim about his work on setting up an Internet connection for the whole community. He has already purchased the satellite dish, router, etc. to make it work. He gave me the name of the guy to contact to find out how to connect my villa to the same network. He is pretty passionate about it since he needs this for his business. I got the name of the contact at the communications company to find out what has to be done for my villa.

On my way back to my casa, Peter yelled over that they were going to go swimming and that I am welcome to come. It sounded great to me, since I had nothing planned except a short trip into Cobano, 8kms away, to shop and connect to the Internet. But it was only about 11:30 in the morning, so there was plenty of time for that.

We selfishly lounged in the somewhat cool, but deliciously refreshing pool water of Bob and Paula’s pool. Their pool has one of those edges that flow over into a small waterfall. The edge faces to the south to the stunning view of the beautiful blue pacific. Though I have not yet met Bob and Paula, they are happy to share their pool with neighbors. Apparently they will arrive on the 29th of this month. Scott, Peter and I stood gazing out at the view and chatted about nothing of particular importance. This general state of laziness appears to be a typical mode for the people I have met so far in this hilltop village. It makes sense in the middle of the day at least because it is too warm and humid to do much physical activity.

I meandered back towards my casa to get out of the sun and take a siesta. I only spent about 1-1/2 hours in the partial sun, but that was enough to cook my fairly white gringo skin to a delicate pinkness that would make it difficult to lie in bed that night. The siesta was short, but enjoyable. I got up to eat a little food before heading into Cobano 8 km north. Cobano is a fairly small town, but it has a couple of grocery stores a bank, post office and good inexpensive Internet café. The pleasant young lady working inside spoke English well. She told me 600 colones for one hour. That’s just a little over $1/hour. A very good price for me especially since I typically have all my messages pre-typed before I get to the computer. The only time-consuming part is responding directly to new emails. Still I left the café with only spending 500 colones (just under $1!) for about 45 minutes of time.

I traveled a short distance down the street and saw a phone right across from the “Super Maya” market. Peter had mentioned that this is the best market as far as price goes in the area. I selected a six-pack of beer, some more milk, some pasta and a package of frozen chicken. The checkout lady started ringing everything up, but stopped at the chicken. She mumbled something to me in Spanish that I did not understand. I told her “no comprende” as she made a motion like writing. I noticed when I was in the meat and vegetable section of the store that there was a young lady weighing items that people brought to her. I vaguely remember this issue during the last visit to Costa Rica. They weight and mark the price for the vegetables and meat in a back section of the store. So I grabbed the frozen blob of chicken and brought it back to the scale. It was quickly weighed and stamped with a price without a word being spoken. The total for my entire haul was about $24 US. Oddly this was about the same price the last time I went to the store. I quietly wondered if they charge gringos whatever they want if they can’t speak Spanish. Outside the store I called Geoff again but no answer. I figured that sometime in the next two months we would be able to meet, so I headed back to my casa.

That evening I wandered back to the neighbors, Peter and Jennifer. I tried to make a lot of noise when I came in case it was not a good time for visitors. I am still trying to figure out how much time to hang out with these new friends. I don’t want to just hang around and be a bother, yet they always are welcoming. I decided to just stay a short while, then head home. Again the conversation was rather uninteresting and filled with gaps of time where everyone just stared at the view. I tried to get a sense of whether I was cramping their space or not. I’m still not sure what to make of these interactions. As I left I thought maybe it would be best to not visit tomorrow. That way they could have Sunday with their friends and not feel the need to entertain a newcomer. I am looking forward to Monday when more activity will occur here. Many of the workers for the 2 remaining villas will be back to work.

Sunday morning arrived in a similar fashion to others so far – bright sun streaming in, parrots squawking in the trees outside the window and workers making a stir at the new homes below me. I decided I would explore a little around the new community. There are 6 brand new homes being finished here, all done by Peter’s crew of Costa Rican laborers. They are very hard working and tough guys. I cannot imagine working in this kind of temperature and humidity. I get soaking wet simply walking around in the middle of the day.

The road to this community runs north and south. I headed to the north in search of a small stream that I remembered crossing over on my way to the villa. As I walked slowly down the road I could feel the sun burning on any exposed part of my body. I tried my best to navigate down the road while staying in the shade of the trees. There are a few spots in the road that were all but impassible a few weeks ago. This area had almost 2 straight weeks of rain. When that happens the roads turn into a slippery mess of red clay. And occasionally as on this part of the road a slide from the edge of the road makes its way across the middle of the road. Peter mentioned earlier that he dug this mud out by himself. As is often the case, the pleas to the town of Montezuma go unanswered. Here it is a matter of complaining loud enough while maintaining a friendly relationship which people in order to get something done. Even then you will fall victim to the occasional lack of urgency in the area of services rendered by the locals.

I descended into a coolness of the valley marked by the small stream that meandered underneath the bridge. The valley is so steep on both sides of the river that the only way to explore up and down the river is to actually walk in the river. Not knowing the snake situation in these parts, I felt content to splash cool water over my head and take a few pictures. The foliage along the river was a much deeper green than the canopy above. It was almost dark at places up the river.

It was a bit more challenging to make my way back to villa. It was almost all uphill. I had to stop many times to catch my breath and cool off my head by removing my hat. It did not help too much. I was pretty much soaked with sweat by the time I reached my home. I took my second shower of the day and rested for a mini-siesta on the bed.

After a small lunch I decided to explore to the south of my new little village. The road here dropped off quite quickly offering amazing views of the ocean below. At one particular point on the walk there was a huge section of earth that recently broke off below the road and slide down covering the switch back down below. It looked fairly recent. It made me think about how us mere mortals carve up the earth with little or no thought to its long-term effect. To make a road up such a steep slope is bound to have its consequences for humans and other little creatures alike. But then again, who am I to talk. After all I am one of those silly humans buying a home perched on the side of a hill!! Hah, what a hypocrite!

I finally made it to the beach in about 10 minutes, but it was a hot 10 minutes. I found a passage to the ocean through break in the fences that lined the road. One of the many cool things about Costa Rica is that no one can own the first 50 meters of land from where the high tide hits the land at its highest point. All of this property is open to the public.

The beach was as beautiful as I remembered it last year when I visited this area. There are lots of shells, rocks and driftwood to pick through along the water’s edge. The surf at medium or low tide exposes many reef rocks that are brutal to try and swim around. I found this out the hard way last year. It is smarter to swim or surf at high tide or else you risk the danger of severely scarped knees and shins. Unfortunately there is occasionally quite a bit of litter in places, mostly plastic bottles. For a country so smart about taking care of its natural resources it is odd to see that many people still just toss stuff out of there car as they drive by. Someone must be tasked with picking up most of the litter, but they obviously miss spots. Trash removal from homes is rather odd as well. People leave plastic bags of trash at seemingly random intersections along major streets. Some day during the week, I’m still not sure which; someone comes by to pick them up. Not surprisingly various animals, usually dogs, attack these bags to get what they can before the pick-up.

Please note "favorites" listed below do NOT include relatives and friends that were kind enough to let me stay at their homes. I felt that trying to include them in the favorites it would cause irreparable harm to family unity. In other words, I could not keep telling all of you that your place was the best:)

I will fill these in as I calculate them and think back on all the stories that came from this trip. Also if there are others that you would like to see on this list, post a comment.

Statistics:

Total miles driven: 10,087Total number of days from start to finish: 61 (7/2-9/2)

Longest day of driving: 12 hours (2 drivers!), 9 hours (1 driver)

Longest time stayed in one area/city: Mequon, WI - 16 days

Number of miles traveled by ferry: 409 miles

Number of States/Provinces(Canada) passed through: 27 (2 provinces)

Path of States or Provinces passed through:

NV-UT-CO-KS-MO-IA-WI-IL-(WI)-MI-Ontario-NY-MA-NH-ME-Nova Scotia-(ME)-(MA)-CT-(NY)-NJ-PA-WV-OH-IN-(OH)-(IN)-(IL)-

(IA)-MN-SD-WY-ID-(NV)

Most states passed through in one day: 5 (MA-CT-NY-NJ-PA)Most expensive toll road: Pennsylvania Turnpike - $13Number of toll booths run through because I got in the electronic ticket lane: 3 (I'm wanted in 2 states, now - NH and NY)

Favorites:

Favorite place to stay overnight (indoors): By the Sea Inn, Dennisport, Cape Cod, Mass.Favorite place to stay overnight (outdoors): Cheewonki Neck campground in MaineFavorite State/Province to drive though: Maine

Favorite State/Province to visit: MaineFavorite City/town visited: tie between Bar Harbor, Maine; Nantucket Island, Massachusetts; Rockport, Massachusetts; Dennisport, Massachusetts; Madison, WI; Chicago, IL

Favorite park or attraction to visit: tie between Acadia National Park and Yellowstone

Favorite Eating place (seafood): Oceanside Inn (honorable mention: Italian restaurant in Lunenburg, NS)Favorite eating place (non-seafood): Outback Steakhouse, Troy, OhioFavorite place to take pictures: tie between coast of Maine and Nova Scotia

Favorite Places I would go back to: Maine/Nova Scotia; Grand Tetons, WY; Nantucket

Places I missed, that I wished I went to: Washington, DC, New York City

Most pleasant unexpected event or experience: tie: 1) Southwest Harbor, Maine – jumper cable story 2) Finding my old college roommate Eric in Rockport, MA

Place with most friendly people: Nantucket Island, Massachusetts

Worst:

Least Favorite place to stay overnight (indoors): Big Chief Hotel, Battle Mountain, NV

Least Favorite place to stay overnight (outdoors): campground outside of Portland, ME

Least Favorite State to drive though: Kansas

Least Favorite State to visit: Kansas

Least favorite city/town visited: sad to say, but my home town of Springfield, MA was quite depressing to see. Fortunately all my relatives live outside of the main city now, so I did not spend much time there.

Least Favorite park or attraction visited: Badlands of S. Dakota - would have been more interesting had it been sunny outside

Least Favorite Eating place (seafood): Wee Packet Inn, Dennisport, MA - it was more disappointing than anything. I expected it to be better than it was.

Least Favorite eating place (non-seafood): many of the hotel lobby "continental breakfasts"

Worst restrooms: too many to name along the highways at truck stops

Least favorite unexpected event of experience: hitting horrific traffic after entering Canada from Michigan (in the rain no less!)

Place with least friendly people: I had so few experiences of unfriendly folks that this is hard to answer. Now unfriendly drivers are different - Ontario, Canada and New York (near NYC) were the worst.

Most snotty person experience: Jenny Lake Lodge dining room - we were turned away for breakfast because we were not staying at the lodge even though the place was practically empty.

Worst road conditions: CaliforniaOther miscellaneous Items:

Most road signs for one establishment:

Wall Drugs in South DakotaMost unusual road sign:

Blue and white sign with an arrow on the bottom and a the words "1/2 mile" Probably used to say "rest area" or "gas", but the top was blank.Final thoughts:

There is no doubt that this was a trip that I will remember for the rest of my life. I've always wanted to do it, but did not have the opportunity. There are so many little moments that pop into my head from day to day that could not have been captured in this blog. They will rest in the recesses of my ever failing memory. Hopefully they will occasionally get jarred lose by some words or thought or event.

Would I do it over again? Probably not. There is far too much of the Midwest that is just not that interesting to drive through. I'm sure there are wonderful towns and people living in many of these places, but I am more of a lake/river/mountain and ocean person. I find these areas much more scenic and picturesque. I'm grateful to all those farmers who can live like they do and provide such an incredible amount of food for the rest of us. We could not live without them. I just couldn't live where they live. They probably feel the same about California.

This country is truly a treasure of natural resources. The variety of people, landscape, cities, towns, National Parks is astounding. The cultural diversity of our big cities is fascinating. Chicago was the only new big city that I visited. I could have stayed much longer. I never even made it to Washington, DC nor to NYC. There are many things to explore there as well.

And for me Maine is a place to be explored many times over. I feel I have barely scratched the surface of what to see and do there. I don't think I could live there in the winter, but I would visit and enjoy it all the other seasons.

Finally a last word of thanks to all the friends and relatives that I stayed with on this trip. I REALLY appreciated all of your hospitality. It was great to see all of my family (twice) and all my in-laws, with the exception of a niece and nephew (they were out of town).

Lastly to my good friend, Gregory, who coerced me into writing this blog (OK, so it didn't take too much to convince me). I hated doing it at times, but it was a worthwhile experience. I can tell at times I was just tired and trying to get something down. At other times it felt very creative and fun. It certainly taught me that persistence with writing can go a long way to making a successful and interesting story.

I hope you enjoyed at least some or all of it.

Regards,

Gene - the weary traveler

It was quite a pleasure to have a companion as well as a second driver on my final part of my journey. Our first day proved to be quite boring in terms of the scenery. We crossed through many states including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. I was so sick of seeing cornfields by the end of the day. We had some interesting moments when we got farther into Iowa. I said to Jim that the water on the side of the road seemed like it was not usually supposed to be there. There were trees and grasses under water. As we drove farther it was obvious that this was the result of a flooded river. We started seeing homes also partially under water. The bad rains that had flooded parts of Ohio and other areas in the Midwest hit this area. A bit farther down the road we came upon a low bridge crossing over the offending river. It was the Mississippi River. I knew that the Mississippi was a big river, but it was incredibly high, swallowing areas of trees and some homes along the banks. The banks were not even visible anymore. It was hard to imagine that much water coming out of the sky especially since on this day it was sunny and clear.

During my shift at driving, Jim began to get familiar with all my electronic navigation equipment. He managed to get my GPS to display on the map program I had on my Mac. This gave much more detail on our exact location. It also helped to figure out which towns were coming up. Jim was not as used to having to find a place to sleep on the fly. On some of the days of traveling we would guess about where we would want to stop and Jim would call a few hotels in the area. He got pretty good at negotiating good prices over the phone. For the camping nights we would just look for signs of a campsite. This very first day of driving we got very fortunate to find a small municipal park that had campsites. It was right on a very nice lake. There were only 2 or 3 more RV’s parked in the entire campground. It was a beautiful full moon night. We enjoyed a chicken sandwich chased with a very sweet red wine that my friend John had given me.

After a few minutes enjoying the full moon from a local dock we crashed. It had been about a 12 hour day of driving-the longest so far of my entire trip. Jim took the tent and I slept in the van. We had another long day tomorrow to get to Mt. Rushmore.

By the time I woke up Jim had already packed up the tent and checked out the campground and park. We headed into the main part of town to see if we could find a café. There appeared to be only one in town. The hostess/waitress/bus person and probably part owner of the establishment sat us in a non-smoking section. A quick glance around the room made us think most everyone here lived in town. They were mostly older folks. As new people came into the café they would say hi to several people. I wondered if anyone ate breakfast at home in this town. We ate a typical breakfast of eggs and hash browns. It was unspectacular. It did not matter that she forgot my bacon that I ordered. I had been putting on enough pounds as it is. We paid at the counter and hit the road again.

Jim had this annoying habit of starting to sing that Willie Nelson song “On the Road Again”, each time we got back on the road. He stopped doing it after I threatened to beat him to a bloody pulp☺

The drive through the remainder of Iowa and through Minnesota and the first part of South Dakota was again a blur of cornfields and flat land as far as the eye could see. If it were not for the never-ending billboards along the highway, we would have had nothing interesting to look at. Apparently Wall Drugs in South Dakota somewhere has a huge budget for billboards. I think they had one sign for every 2-3 miles.

Eventually we reached Southwestern South Dakota and the scenery began to change. We were coming upon the “Badlands” of South Dakota. This is an interesting geological formation of quite some size. There was a National Park Road that ran through a good portion of it. We decided to follow the loop road to get a glimpse of what it looked like. We did stop occasionally to read some of the placards setup by the parks system. The area is full of conical-shaped hills with multiple layers of colorful soil. We learned that the different colors corresponded to a different time in geological history. This whole area (as with the entire earth) was underwater many years ago. As the water receded, rain began to wash away parts of the hills. These hills remained, but some areas of weaker rock wore away carving canyons for even more erosion to occur. It was mildly interesting to look at. I imagine if I were a geology buff, I would have spent more time here. We however had a goal to reach Rapid City, South Dakota. We moved on.

We made it to Rapid City just around sunset. Jim had called ahead and scored us a good deal on a hotel room. This was a sizeable town. It is the biggest city next to the big attraction of Mt. Rushmore. There were many bronze statues of people scattered about in the city. They were creepy in a way because they looked so real. Jim thought it would be great fun to spray-paint yourself in bronze and stand on a corner and scare the crap out of tourists by moving as they went by. I thought that would be a hilarious trick.

The following morning we packed our stuff quickly so we could get a move on to Mt. Rushmore. The area near the monument was clean with new-looking concrete parking garages. It looked like they may have recently completed an upgrade of the area. We made our way to the main viewing area, which passed through a row of stone columns. Each column had a flag in each of the 4 directions that represented a state or territory of the US. Visible through this row of flags was the monument itself. The 4 presidents heads were bright white compared to the grayish-colored granite all around it and below it.

We met a pleasant gentleman from Iowa who told us all about his fancy digital camera. He showed us a photo he took of the worker standing on top of one of the president’s heads. He could zoom right in and see that his lower back/butt was showing. Impressive!

One thing I noticed on this trip was that everybody has a camera these days. If we saw a family of 4, usually all 4 people would have cameras. Also many more people could now afford these very fancy SLR-type digital cameras. I wondered how many knew how to use half of the features. Also the amount of memory that they have has increased such that everyone takes a HUGE number of photos. This gives you a better chance of getting a really nice shot. It has the unfortunate side effect of a time consuming effort to weed out the photos you don’t want. My “old” camera could only hold 45 hi-resolution photos, so I tend to be more discriminating when taking photos. I often wish I could take more shots, though.

So the heads of the Presidents were quite impressive, but it was on to Devil’s Tower for us. I believe it was another 6-hour trip to get to this strange place. As you neared the area a thimble-shaped rock emerged from the landscape. The Native Americans who lived in this area over the years have treated this place as sacred. It is easy to see why. There is nothing near this rock pillar that resembles it in size or composition. As you get closer you can see that the tower is made up of 5-sided shafts of rock all fused together. Some of them curved at their base giving the structure a smoother flattened base.

The descriptions in the brochure explain some of the theories of how this tower formed. No one is quite sure of which theory is correct. The basic idea is that this rock was formed under water from volcanic action such as a steam vent. As the water receded and land washed away it left this one tower standing. Presumably this was because it was very hard igneous rock and it resisted being worn down. It is a puzzling structure. It is easy to understand why the Native Americans would think of it as spiritual. It has that other worldly feel to it.

On the back side of the rock (facing east and in the shade) we spotted some rock climbers. The hardness of the tower makes it ideal for climbers to do their thing.

We moved on towards Yellowstone saying goodbye to the mystery tower. As we approached the entrance to the part we watched a beautiful sunset wash over some of the interesting rock formations that began to appear. It was quite dark when we came upon a few National Park campgrounds. We found one that had only a few spots total, but it was late so we decided to call it a day. Tomorrow morning we would be entering Yellowstone.

We met at Nightsky Café in downtown Troy, Ohio. Jim, his sister, Debbie and I ordered dinner and found a comfortable place to chat and catch up on the last few weeks. Jim just returned from 4 weeks in traveling in Europe with his wife, Agnes. She had to leave to go back to work in California while Jim and I have 2 weeks to travel across the remainder of the US by car. Jim’s niece and her 2 kids showed up at the dining place a few moments later. Also an old friend of Jim, Keith, came by. This would be the beginning of meetings with several friends and family, whose names I would have to struggle to remember.

We left the café and went our separate ways. Jim and I drove back to Debbie’s house, where we were spending the nights. We relaxed back at her house talking about what has been going on for the last few weeks. Gary, Debbie’s husband, arrived home from a long day of work. He is a supervisor for a group of machinists at a nearby company, the name of which escapes me. He has a noticeable southern drawl that made me think he grew up in the south. He told me that he lived in Texas for a while, but is actually from Ohio. He has an accent he picked up when living in Texas and maybe being a truck driver for several years. He sounds as if he grew up in the south but he is actually from Ohio.

The next day was busy one. Jim and I decided to take a plane ride in one of the bi-planes at a local airport. There was an air show going on during the weekend that highlighted “Waco” planes. These particular bi-planes were built in Troy, Ohio area. We paid for out ride and went out to a little yellow tent near the red-colored bi-plane that would be our ride.

After a short wait a gentleman came over and told us to follow him over to the plane. He was very careful to point out the proper places to step on the wing while getting in. He also was careful to explain the proper way to get inside the seating area. It was like doing a pirouette. You kneeled on the seat and spun around to get your butt into the seat. The passengers sat in front of the pilot, which was quite unexpected. It was interesting to note that there were levers and foot pedals in front of us that appeared to also control the plane, yet no one mentioned anything about them.

We were buckled in and ready to go. The engine roared to a level such that Jim and I could no longer converse. The plane taxied down the grass runway and turned to take off. The roar was deafening now, but the plane was surprisingly smooth on the grass runway. Once airborne we had spectacular views of the Troy area. We were warned to not stick our hands outside the open cockpit area. Even so, we could still get some great shots of the land below. The struts on the wings made an interesting foreground pattern in the photos. Before take-off Jim had told the pilot to “be aggressive” with the flight. In other words he wanted him to do some rolls and tricks. Once we gained the maximum altitude the pilot suddenly dipped the plane downward sharply to the right and then again to the left without any warning. It gave me quite a scare, but a thrill at the same time.

The short 20-minute flight was over too soon for me. The landing was as smooth as the take-off. Jim’s Dad was there to greet us when we got off. We were both quite happy with the short, but exciting adventure. Later we would learn that we flew over Debbie’s house twice during our flight. It was hard to know since everything looks so different from the air.

After our flight I headed for a 3-hour drive to Bloomington, Indiana to meet an old college roommate. I had not seen John in over 30 years! The ride to Bloomington was not very interesting until I got into Bloomington. It was strange to see a thriving college town atmosphere in the middle of this predominantly farm country. John and his wife Joanne had a young woman visiting while I was there. She had a strong Boston accent. It turned out she was from Boston, but had lived in Bloomington for many years.

This made me ponder why some people lose the accent of where they are from like John and Joanne and others do not. Is it because they mindfully don’t want to let go of their roots? Or maybe it is because of some subconscious reaction to their new surroundings that they adapt to those around them. Any professional linguists out there that know the answer, please post a comment?

John and I took a ride in his cool black convertible Corvette through the town of Bloomington. We stopped and had lunch at a place called “Scotty’s.” The town was filled with young college students, some with their parents, getting ready for their first day of school (the next day). How ironic that my first college roommate and I were watching all these very young looking kids getting ready to start their college experience. We had an enjoyable time chatting about family, work, and a little about whom else we have been in touch with.

Back at John’s house I gave Joanne and John a goodbye and promised to stay in touch. It was back to the road for a 3-hour return trip to Troy, Ohio. For unclear reasons, I got incredibly tired. I don’t know if it was the one beer I had at lunch or from waking up early. So I pulled off into a rest area and fell asleep for about 45 minutes. Little did I know that Jim and his family back at home were expecting me for dinner. Fortunately they were running late making dinner (or maybe they just were being nice to me by saying that?).

Jim and I were invited to his friend, Keith’s house to hang out and possibly play cards. We arrived fashionably late at about 9:30pm. I met 3 more of Jim’s friends. We watched part of the football game playing on Keith’s nice plasma TV. I heard lots of hilarious stories of some of the pranks Jim and friends pulled when they were younger. Keith got out the cards and taught all of us how to play a game called “screw your neighbor.” It’s an easy game to play because you can carry on lots of conversations while the game is going on. It is fairly simple. The stories of Jim and friends continued throughout the game. By the time we said our goodbyes, my stomach was aching from laughter. It was great fun!

On to Sunday… Jim scored us some Cincinnati Red’s Baseball tickets. Of course this is not too difficult, since the team is not doing so well. Not only that, but they were playing the Florida Marlin’s, another team not doing so well. It did not matter to us. Jim’s niece and husband joined us on the baseball trip to Cincinnati – about a 2-hour trip.

The Cincinnati Reds’ Stadium is a fairly new place as compared to many of the major league parks. It has the usual collection of luxury boxes, a high-tech scoreboard and 2 towers in center field for shooting off fireworks when the home team hits a homerun. The tower got a workout in the first inning. The Reds scored 6 runs including a grand slam to take a huge lead. The Marlins came back, but never enough to make the rest of the game very interesting. It was sad to see that there were probably more empty seats in the ballpark than full. It has been many years since the “Big Red Machine” of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Pete Rose and others.

At the end of the game they let the fans run around the bases. Jim and I elected to get in line early to circle the bases. It was pretty fun, but crowded on the base paths once we finally made it out there. They led us off the field and back up into the stands where we found this huge line that must have been about 200 or more people. We were happy that we got in line early.

Back in Troy we had a nice dinner with several family members. This is when I was exposed to some interesting Midwest outdoor games. The first involved throwing cloth bags filled with dry corn at a platform about 27 feet away. The platform had a hole towards the back of the higher end (the end farthest away). Four people played teammates stood next to different platforms. The turns of underhand throws alternated between different sides and teams. The object was to attempt to get the corn-filled bag into the hole (3 pts) or land it on the wooden platform without it sliding off (1 pt). To make things a little more complicated the opposing team could cancel out your points by landing on the same.

Now the interesting part of this story is that Jim kept telling me they were going to be teaching the game to me sometime over the weekend. They didn’t explain the game, but just told me that the name of it was “corn hole.” Being the pervert that I am, I thought the worst. I was relieved to find out it was a harmless take-off on horseshoes.

We also played a little “hillbilly golf.” All that is required to make this game is 6 golf balls, some string and PVC pipes. First you drill holes through each of the golf balls. You then cut a piece of string about 3 feet long. After tying a knot near the one end of the string, you feed the other end through a golf ball, letting fall to the other end against the knot. You tie one more knot on the opposite side of the ball, and then repeat for the other side of the string with a second ball. You repeat this until you have 3 identical strings with 2 balls on the ends. The PVC pipes are used to make two stands with 3 “rungs” of different heights. As in the other game you take turns throwing the 3 strings toward the stand. More points are made for looping a string on the bottom rung.

These games were interspersed with enjoying the great food including Jim, Senior’s famous grilled pork chops. It was quite a nice family time. Jim and his family made me feel very welcome.

The next day Jim and I would start the last leg of my cross-country trip. We would be heading through South Dakota and Wyoming. We planned to see Mt. Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons.

Wed-Fri

After saying a fond farewell to Anita it was time to head down to Philadelphia and on to Ohio. I was on the road again by myself. By now I had traveled over 7,000 miles. I was starting to get even more anxious to get back to California.

Just before heading out of Boston, I thought I would give my niece, Emma, one more call to see if she was available for lunch. I got lucky and she answered her cell phone. She gave me her address near Mass Ave. I hit another stroke of luck by finding a parking spot across from her apartment. We walked to the plaza near the Christian Science Church that Anita and I were a few days earlier. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the largest Cheesecake Factory Restaurant I have ever seen. It had so many sections to it that you could easily get lost inside. I got all the latest on what Emma was up to. She has only one semester left at the Berklee School of Music, and then she is going to take a shot at being a music teacher. She will also try to write and sell some songs. She is more talented than she likes to admit. She is a sweet, modest young lady with a beautiful voice. I enjoyed our brief time together.

It was time to hop on the Mass Pike and make my way towards Philly. Of course my nephew, Tony, did not know of my plan to stay with him at his apartment. So I rang him up on the road towards New York City. He was happy to make some room for my stay. But first I needed to grind through the worse traffic of my entire trip. I was hitting the NYC area right around rush hour. It was a painful process getting across the George Washington Bridge. The rain alternated from downpours to drizzle to nothing. It was a pretty miserable trip. Then my GPS took me on this strange route through the Adult Video Store capitol of Philadelphia. It was quite weird. I finally made it to Tony and Emily’s place at around 10 pm. - fortunately for me they usually stay up late.

Tony was not kidding when he said they lived downtown. They were right in the middle of it. It is an interesting city with mainly brick structures tightly packed together. The stores and restaurants are typically not the big chain-type places. There were many little cafes and small markets. It was fun to explore.

That night I contemplated visiting Washington DC. The drive was about an hour and a half by car. There was also a possibility of a train trip. I was very burned out on driving, so that was out. The train was kind of pricey. It would be a short amount of time to see such big city with so many museums. So I decided it would be a place to come back to some day.

The next morning I washed some clothes and packed up before meeting Tony for lunch. I knew I had a very long trip of maybe a day and a half to get to my friend, Jim, in Ohio. So I only had time for lunch and a quick goodbye to Tony. I would have liked to check out more of Philadelphia as well. But time was not on my side now. Jim was waiting. I really wanted some traveling company as well.

So I blasted down the Pennsylvania Turnpike towards Troy, Ohio. It was not a very exciting trip. Both sides of the turnpike were lined with tall trees. It was like going down a gouge cut through a heavily forested countryside. The only stops I made were for restrooms and gas. There were a few Amish people that I spotted at the rest stops. I pretended not to notice them, but peeked at their interesting outfits when they weren’t looking. They wore very simple clothes. Everyone wore some type of hat. The ladies wore thin linen bonnets and the gentlemen wore black hats. I thought about them and wondered what it was like for them to come from their simple farm lives and enter a place full of people and modern gadgets.

It was getting late so I started looking for hotels near the highway. I was a bit surprised when I saw a big sign that read “Welcome to West Virginia.” I had to double-check my maps to make sure I didn’t take a long turn anywhere. Sure enough there is a small sliver of West Virginia that I had to cross through to get to Ohio. This would be yet another new state for me. I crashed at a Super 8 Hotel right near the highway. I was stunned when I got out of my air-conditioned car and felt the think wet air outside. The humidity was intense. It would have been a very uncomfortable night to sleep in the van.

By the way…the Pennsylvania Turnpike was the most expensive turnpike on the entire trip: $13 total!! I think I traveled almost the entire length of it. I may have missed a small piece near Philadelphia.

The next morning I was all business again. I grabbed some breakfast snacks and gas at a nearby travel store and hit the road. I entered Ohio not too far down the road. What seemed like an eternity later I was within an hour of Jim in Troy, Ohio. He was staying with his sister. I rang him up and gave him an update. He gave me directions off of the freeway to meet in the center of Troy at a nice café.

My Troy, Ohio adventure had begun.

Anita and I checked out of our plush accommodations at the Hilton hotel the next morning. We had one task to do before heading to Cape Cod. I had to pick up a prescription at a Boston pharmacy on Mass Ave before we left. It needed to get this prescription because I cannot sleep without it. So I approached the pharmacy clerk with my name. She happily said that the prescription was ready, but there was a problem. This did not sound good. Apparently my doctor’s office had also filled the same prescription in Placerville and they could not give me this one until they called the Placerville pharmacy to cancel the prescription there. The Placerville pharmacy did not open for another hour. I was quite frustrated, but we made the best of it by roaming around the Mass Ave area.

Oddly enough, this happened to be the area where my niece, Emma, went to school. I was fortunate to be able to get her number and call her, but only got voice mail. Anita and I roamed around the area and found the Christian Science Church with a park right across the street. It was quite a large and imposing church. There were several sections of it that looked like they had been built at different times. Directly adjacent to the church on one side was the headquarters for the Christian Science monitor newspaper. This building was quite large as well. It is a well-respected newspaper published in many languages. On the opposite side of the church is a beautiful fountain and rectangular pool area. It was a nice area to wander about. The irony of waiting for a drug prescription near the Christian Science Church was not lost on Anita. The Christian Scientists do not believe in medical intervention in the case of illness, including the use of drugs.

We made our way back to the pharmacy and found that they had gotten through to the Placerville store. I was given my prescription and we were on our way.

The drive to the Cape was easy. There were not the usual horrible back-ups on the bridges over the Cape Cod Canal, which are common in the summer. We quickly made our way to Dennisport and a little inn called “By the Sea.” We were delighted to find our room faced right out on to the ocean. It was wonderfully appointed though somewhat small. This was not a big deal since we both wanted to enjoy the outdoors. We opened the window facing the ocean and listened to the delightful sound of the Atlantic Ocean splashing up against our little private beach.

We asked the manager if she would recommend a good seafood restaurant for that evening. She had a whole folder of menus from local places. Her strongest recommendation was within walking distance, the Oceanside Inn. We called to make a reservation, but their first seating available was 9pm. They did have seating in a bar/lounge area so we opted to try it out.

The hostess seated us at a table, which was practically on top of another small table for two. The menu had a wide assortment of seafood from various types of local fish, to scallops and of course lobster. I ordered a bowl of clam chowder and a 2-lb lobster. Anita ordered a scallop dish.

The area of our seating was so crowded there was a woman standing next to my table who practically had her butt in my face. I would have enjoyed it, but it was a rather large butt.

The food was served within a reasonable amount of time for the amount of people in the restaurant. Anita’s Cajun-broiled scallops were as tasty as eating a piece of spicy candy. I grabbed one of my lobster claws and used the cracker to break out the tender lobster meat inside. It had the typical pink and white coloring. The meal came with 4 dipping sauces. One was the typical drawn butter, one was a spicy sesame sauce and the other 2 were not memorable enough for my old brain to remember. I took the meaty piece of claw and tried the spicy dip. The tender, juicy piece of lobster woke up my taste buds and put me in food heaven. It was a spectacular mix of tastes. The lobster meat itself was so well cooked and tender that it didn’t really need any of the sauces, but I kept going back to the spicy one.

After a few minutes of gorging ourselves we realized there was a new couple sitting next to us. I don’t remember them arriving, but we chatted for a while. They were 60-something years old. They lived part of the time in Osterville on the other side of the Cape and another part of the year in Florida. They mentioned they traveled from Osterville to this particular restaurant because they heard it was one of the best. Both of them ordered a 2-lb lobster like mine. We feasted on heaps of delicious seafood for some time. It seemed like a Medieval feast with seafood instead of large hunks of meat.

Anita and I finished as much as we could, then wished our new friends good-bye. They were delightful company. We waddled on down the street back to our inn, stuffed to the gills (pun intended). We both slept very well that evening even though I used my sleeping pad on the floor (there was only one bed in this room). The sound of the ocean combined with a gentle ocean breeze blowing across the room from the side window to the back window lulled me into a deep sleep.

In the morning I practically jumped out of my pajamas when a jackhammer started pounding away at concrete directly behind our inn. It was 7:30 am!! Now that may not be too early for most laborers or most people in general. But we were on vacation looking for peace and quiet. I reached up to shut the window so I could at least hear myself carry on a conversation.

The conversation at breakfast that morning included discussion of the jack hammering, which continued for another 2 hours! Despite the noise we met a nice young couple from Toronto, Canada. He was a banker and she - a schoolteacher. We discussed plans for the day. We mentioned we were going to try and catch the ferry to Nantucket that day.

The trip to Hyannis to pick up the ferry was only 9 miles. We pulled up to the line and asked the man how much for 2 adults and one vehicle. He said $400 plus some change. Anita and I looked at each other waiting for the man’s face to change into a big smile because of the joke he was playing on us. He did not smile. I said, your joking, right? He repeated the price. Without giving it too much thought I asked where I should park the car. They are obviously trying to discourage cars on the island. Anita jumped out to buy 2 tickets and I went to park. We barely made it onto the 11:00 am ferry.

The high-speed ferry we were on only took an hour to make the crossing from Hyannis to Nantucket. The ocean was calm. The weather was warm with fair weather high, thin clouds. When we were back on the Hyannis-side of the trip, it was not possible to see the island on the horizon. As we crossed towards Nantucket, I watched as the mainland of Cape Cod slowly disappeared as if it was dissolving into thin air. As in a typical mirage the bottom of the land closest to the sea vanished along with the top of the land. Eventually a sliver of land vanished into nothingness. The curve of the earth just barely blocked the view. Not too long after this magic trick of nature we arrived at the harbor on Nantucket Island.

We passed several bike rental shops and proceeded to the visitor’s center. The center was packed with almost as many volunteers as tourists seeking advice on what to do. The woman I spoke with gave me a map of the bike trails on the island. Anita and I had talked earlier about renting bikes to get to some of the more out of the way beaches. We made our way back to Young’s Bike Shop to pick up our rentals.

Once we made it through the busy part of the town we found the bike trail toward Sunnyside Beach on the south part of the island. Somewhere along the way, however we lost our trail. As we stood puzzling over the map an Indian gentleman stopped his truck and asked if we needed help. We told him where we were going and he kindly gave us a simple explanation of how to get back on track. We found this happened to us 3 times in our short stay. Everyone we came in contact with that appeared familiar with the island was very helpful. I’m sure they are welcoming to visitors because their livelihood depends on them.

We made it easily to Surfside Beach. There was a small parking lot for the few cars that were locals or travelers that didn’t mind paying the high price to get their car on the island. There was also a bus stop right next to a large bike rack area. We locked our bikes and passed the little shack that sold few items of food. We made our way down to a beautiful beach. It was a very typical Cape Cod-type beach with sand dunes a short distance from where high tide would be. The dunes were covered with tall green grasses as well as short stubby weeds and wildflowers.

It was a little bit breezy when we arrived at the somewhat crowded beach. We elected to park ourselves near the edge of the dunes to utilize them as a natural windbreak. Your usual beach activities were going on: teenage boys tossing a football around, kids digging holes with their toy shovels and young girls trying to look their best for the young boys.

After a relaxing for a few minutes a couple of young girls began practicing lacrosse. One of the girls was obviously better at it. I asked the more talented girl if she played on a team. She said she was trying out for JV and just went to a lacrosse camp. The inexperienced girl was getting very frustrated trying to catch, then through the ball back. I asked if I could try. The inexperienced one was happy to relinquish her lacrosse stick or whatever they call it. After a few quick pointers, I got pretty good at catching even the throws to my wrong (left) side. Eventually the girls Dad showed up and kept a watchful eye on us. Anita made some comment to me that I didn’t hear. I think it was intended to alert the Dad that I was not some old creepy guy after his pretty daughter. I enjoyed tossing the ball back and forth for a few more moments then told her we had to leave. She was quite thankful for the extra practice. Even her Dad thanked me for giving her the chance to practice. Or maybe he was thankful that I was finally leaving her alone. I’m not sure.

Many people began packing up their things, as some cloudy cool weather started moving in. It didn’t look like rain, but it was a bit cool to be out on the beach in a bathing suit. Anita and I made our way back to the main town much easier than the trip towards the beach. We marveled at the consistency of the homes built on the island. They were almost entirely grayish-brown wood shingles with the typical Cape Cod architecture. The homes were all well kept. The downtown streets were still the old cobble stone style from the 1700’s. We returned the bikes so we could find a bit to eat before taking the return ferry.

It was great to get back to our little cozy inn in Dennisport. That evening we relaxed in our peaceful room writing, reading and listening to some music. The following day we did not stray too far from “home.” Despite the small amount of exercise on the island the previous day, we were both tired. The day consisted of exploring the beaches up and down the Dennisport area. This day was much cooler and overcast, but still pleasant.

The final night we were moved into a new room. This one with 2 beds, a window still facing the ocean and a bit more room overall. I slept a little better that night. It turned out my mattress pad that I had been using the previous 2 nights had a slow leak in it. By the morning, I was basically sleeping on the carpeted floor. The bed was a welcome relief.

Before retiring for the evening, I needed to make a quick trip out to my car. I passed by the living room area where I saw a TV playing the Boston Red Sox game. I stuck my head in to just check the score. There were at least 6 or seven people in the room watching the game and chatting. The stocky man sitting closest to the TV asked if I was a Red Sox fan. The wheels in my brain clicked quickly. Since we were close to Boston, I was guessing that most people watching a Red Sox game would be Red Sox fans. I told them I was not a huge fan, but I liked watching them. But then I mentioned that I really hated the Yankees. I thought this would get me extra points with this group. Boy was I wrong. They were all Yankee fans!! They gave me lots of grief for that comment. It was all in good fun, but I sure felt pretty stupid. Talk about sticking your foot in your mouth!

Our last morning was short at the inn, since we were shooting to get back to the Boston Airport by 11:00 am. It was sad to say goodbye to this charming little in “By the Sea”

The wait for the customs in Portland, Maine was excruciating. I was unfortunately put into a line of cars with a very thorough agent. She slowly went through every car including mine. But she did not search every inch of my van either because she trusted my story or she was overwhelmed with how much stuff I had in the van. Either way, I was happy to be free in the US again.

I found an odd campsite after lots of driving around. It was in Scarborough, Maine. Since I arrived so late, I had to park out in a small lawn area outside the main camp area. But for 25 bucks, I didn’t really care. I was tired and need the rest.

In the morning I quickly rearranged my van for travel and hit the road. I wanted to get down to the north coast of Boston. I followed the coastal road down through many small towns to my first destination, which was Rockport, Massachusetts. I first visited Rockport many years ago when I was in college. One of my college roommates, Eric, was from Rockport. He brought me to his house one weekend late in the school year. His parents lived in a house right along an inland waterway that led out to a beautiful beach. Back then his family had a lobster license for15 or so traps. Eric and I went out one morning and pulled up the traps to retrieve the lobsters. That night he cooked one up for me and that was the first experience with fresh lobster – it was an amazing experience. He taught me how to eat each little piece of the strange creature.

As I drove in to Rockport, I recognized the main part of town where most of the tourists visit. This town is a mix of fishing, tourism and arts and crafts. It has a quaint little harbor with a very famous red wooden building. The building is called “Motif Number One”. It is one of the most frequently painted buildings in the US. The reason for its popularity has to do with its significance to the fishing industry and the gentle lighting it receives late in the day. See my blog photos for a few picture of the building.

Directly adjacent to the main wharf is a strip of land called “Bearskin Neck”. It is packed with interesting little shops. There was a quilt shop with handmade New England Quilts, several painters’ studios and a few restaurants. Many of the shops are of very high quality – not your usual ticky-tacky souvenirs. Of course, there were a few of those as expected. I found a wonderful photography studio on one side branch of Bearskin Neck. All of the photos were nature photos of local scenes. The composition and coloring of the many photos was captivating. I found several that I wanted to buy, but balked at first.

Nearby the photo studio was a restaurant that looked intriguing. I had checked out the menu earlier. The New England Clam chowder sounded perfect for a light lunch. I sat at a table near the window. This gave me the chance to watch a group of 4 kayakers returning from a tour of the harbor. I had wanted to kayak since I first got to Maine, but today was not a good day because of the wind. These kayakers were just touring the harbor, which is pretty small. That didn’t appeal to me, so I passed.

While at the restaurant I kept thinking about my visit years ago to Eric’s parents house. I was wondering if maybe they were still living here. I asked the waitress for a phonebook. I found 3-4 columns of names that matched Eric’s last name. Fortunately, I remembered the street they lived on. There were 2 houses on that street that matched Eric’s last name. I decided I would take a chance at seeing if I would recognize the house.

Before my adventure to Eric’s parents, I made one more stop at the photo studio. I couldn’t take it anymore and told the lady working there that I found something I wanted. She was quite happy to help me out. She described the technique her husband used to take the photos. It sounded a bit unnecessarily complicated, but the result was impressive.

With my new prize in hand I headed down the road to search 2 potential addresses. The first house did not look familiar. The second house was definitely the right one. I took a chance and knocked on the door. An older man that looked familiar came to the door. I told him who I was. Then I mentioned I was wondering were Eric was living these days. He pointed to a house directly across the street. I was amazed as he went back in the house to give Eric a call. He came back out and told me he talked to his wife and he is up working in the yard. He told me they were expecting me, but he didn’t say my name.

This was going to be fun, I thought. As I walked up the steep driveway, an attractive woman greeted me and said you must be Eric’s friend? I said yes and introduced myself. She called to Eric. As Eric turned around he was visibly shocked to see me, but instantly called out my name “Gene Sady!!” I spent maybe 2 hours sitting and chatting with Eric and his wife Luisa. It was quite fun to hear what he had been up to these last 30 years!! He introduced me to his son who I believe is 16 and his daughter, 14. I was happy to see Eric was doing quite well living in the place he loves and enjoying a wonderful wife and family. We exchanged information and I was on my way to Boston, quite happy with my luck at finding Eric.

Next stop down the highway was Gloucester. This town was the center of the fishing industry in its heyday. There are still quite a lot of fishermen that work out of its ports.

I had another motive to visiting this spot. A photo that I took of a man along side of the sidewalk here has been he inspiration for a story I started some time ago. I wanted to see if I could find the exact spot where the photo was taken. I had to park on a side street because there were several people preparing for a yearly memorial service for the fisherman that lost their lives at sea. I have some photos of the memorial, which are quite moving. It lists all the names of the people who died. It is quite amazing how dangerous a professional that fishing can be.

I found what I think was the location of my original photo. The area had changed quite a bit. The building that the man was standing near in the photo is no longer a store, but a group of apartments that are for sale. The bad news is, I can’t seem to locate the original photo. I brought it with me, but can’t find it in my van. I guess I will have to dig through everything when I get home.

Finally after my quick stop in Gloucester, I headed for the Hilton Hotel at Logan International Airport. I checked in, showered and oriented myself to figure out where to pick up my friend, Anita. She was arriving on a flight from California. We had planned on spending a few restful days at Cape Cod.

She arrived at terminal E a little early, but I called ahead and was ready to meet her. It was so nice to have an old friend to pal around with for a change. We had a very comfortable room at the Hilton. It even had a high-definition TV, which we never even turned on. The next morning we would head to Cape Cod, but there would be a slight detour before we would get out of the city.

Stay tuned for the next installment for the details.

The day of the ferry ride across to Canada was clear and calm. Even so, I took 2 Dramamine tablets since I am prone to seasickness. The boat is called “The Cat” which is short for catamaran. It’s not like any catamaran I had ever seen. Inside its belly it could hold over 100 vehicles of various sizes up to as large as a tour bus. The average speed of this ship was 40 knots. I still don’t get how that relates to miles per hour. Maybe someone reading this can enlighten me. The announcer over the PA bragged that the water jets streaming out of the back of the boat could fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in 33 seconds!! That’s a lot of water.

The water was quite calm, but the boat gently rocked to the gradual ups and downs of the swells as we made our 3-hour journey across to Nova Scotia. The Cat was quite comfortable inside. There were several sections of the ship that had very comfortable airplane-like reclining seats. There were smaller sections for people who wanted tables. There were 3 sections with large screen TVs that played different movies during the crossing. There was even a casino section where you could lose all your money in slot machines, if you preferred.

Exiting the boat and passing customs was a breeze, with one exception. As I made my way toward the customs agent, my little declaration slip flew off my dashboard and out the window. I had to stop my car and get out to retrieve it. Visions of my trip to Vancouver Island with my friend Gregrian flashed through my mind. When we were coming into Washington, Gregrian got out of our car to retrieve his papers from the trunk, oblivious to the big signs that said “Do Not Leave Your Car!!” An officer yelled for him to get back in the car. After we explained how we had come into Canada from the US via Vancouver and rented a car in Hillsboro, where we had been working for Intel, they got very suspicious. They made us get out of the car and searched everything. Fortunately they did not find anything too unusual and sent us on our way.

I retrieved the wayward piece of paper without incident. After a few questions from the border inspector, I was a free man in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. I quickly learned at the visitor center that Nova Scotia used to be called Acadia, named by the French settlers who were the first Europeans to occupy the land. The day I arrived just happened to be an “Acadian Day”. It turns out that the Cajuns of Louisiana are direct descendants of the Acadians of Nova Scotia. It was of little surprise that there were road signs in French and English. I encountered many French-speaking folks in the towns I visited. In the inn that I stayed in at least 4 TV channels were in French.

From the visitor center I gathered enough information to decide to head to a town named Lunenburg. It was only 2-1/2 hours away and had a kayak-touring place nearby. Ever since I made it to Maine I had been thinking about trying kayaking. The drive was easy towards Lunenburg, but I was getting sleepy. I do not know if it was from the Dramamine or from getting up early, but I could not keep my eyes opened. So I pulled off the main road in a small turnout and slept for a few minutes.

Feeling refreshed I made the rest of the trip with ease enjoying the view as I made my way. The land was very strange as I made my way towards the town. The trees were noticeably stunted. It was as if I was a giant driving in a giant car with little trees all around. The trees even looked full-grown, but small. I guessed that it could be the very harsh winters this far north. It could also be from over-cutting of the forest. But I doubt it was the later, since the trees looked like they were supposed to be small. It was like a giant bonsai forest of evergreen trees.

As with the coast along Maine, there were several rivers stretching into the mainland as well as inland waterways coming in from the ocean. They were beautiful to behold with crystal clear water, bright green trees all around and an occasional island scattered here and there. This provided lots more opportunities for “reflective” photos.

When I finally reached Lunenburg I was delighted to see a very picturesque fishing town built from the water up a steep hill. Over the hill was more water. I learned that these long finger-shaped hills were knows as “drumlins” carved by glaciers many years ago. It was as if a giant bear claw ripped out chunks of land leaving these narrow harbors and little drumlins to coexist.

The early French settlers populated the hills with homes close to the water for access to the docks, leaving the upper part of the hills for farmland. This was still evident today in this area with the exception of the main hill or drumlin in the center of Lunenburg. It had filled with houses as the population increased. Now there was a combination of houses, bed and breakfast inns and commercial shops.

The weather had turned a bit ominous. Dark clouds started moving in from the west. I decided against camping and found a nice inn that had a room with a view of the harbor outside a side door. It felt good to shower again after a few days. The best part about camping to me these days is when you are finished with it and you take that first shower. Ahh, hot water and a soft clean bed!! Heaven!

That first evening I walked about town to get my bearings. Down by the dock there were little booths that offered boat tours of the area. I talked at length to “Helen” at the “Lobsterman Tours” booth, one because I was interested in learning about lobsters and two because she had the most wonderful English accent.

The next morning after a not so impressive breakfast at the inn, I made my way down to buy a ticket from Helen for the 11:00 trip. The weather was perfect on this day, so I also called the kayak tour shop. It was in the next town over, but there was a problem. They had 2 tour guides who could not do tours on this day. They could not just rent a kayak to me either. It was mostly for safety reasons, because the weather and tides change so quickly. You have to be a very experienced kayaker or you could get in trouble. I resigned myself to the fact that kayaking was not going to happen on this trip, at least not in Canada. I needed to head for the ferry the next day, so I could not do it then either.

There were 8 other adults and 2 kids on the tour in addition to the Captain of the boat and a young guy who is an “invertebrate biologist”, which means he studies all kinds of animals without backbones. Lobsters do not have backbones. He was asked by the DFC (Department of Fisheries Canada, I think – basically like the national fish and game organization) to take some measurements on lobsters. Specifically they needed to understand how their molting works. Like some other invertebrates, lobsters grow by shedding their outer shell. The way they do it is they start to grow a new shell underneath. Then they bloat themselves up by absorbing lots of water. This enlarges the inner shell without breaking it and cracks off the outer shell. Of course once this happens, they are quite vulnerable to prey, since their shell is soft. Fortunate for them the new outer shell hardens quickly and they are protected again.

According to Mr. IB (Invertebrate Biologist) no one really knows how this process works or how long it takes. His job was to pull up the 10 traps that they had placed, take out all the lobsters, take some measurements and blood samples and then toss them back. From the blood samples they could tell what stage the molting was at by levels of certain proteins in the blood.

Am I boring you yet? I found this all quite interesting. I asked many questions about the lobster trap itself. My curiosity was due to the fact that I had started writing a story that had to do with a young man who grew up in a lobster fishing family. I was doing real live research!

Marking all the traps are small bullet-shaped buoys with a stick coming out of the top. I’m not quite sure what the purpose of the stick is. Each person or company or in this case, research organization, has a distinctive color to their buoy. This makes it easy for them to find. I’m not sure if they mark the locations by a GPS or some sort of instrument or they remember where they placed them. I must learn this information some day. It looks quite simple for the lobsterman to pull in the traps. The Captain pulls the boat near the buoy, while the other guy (IB, in this case) uses a long wooden pole with a metal grappling hook on the end to scoop up the nylon cord. Once he has the cord in hand he places the pole in a designated area designed to hold it in place, then wraps the nylon cord over on overhead pulley, then around the flywheel of a wench type device. The flywheel device does all the hard work of lifting the lobster trap from the bottom of the ocean to the deck of the ship. The trap is laid upon a metal section of the edge of the boat for extracting various life forms. I say various life forms because the traps attract all sort of sea life seeking a meal. We found a small flounder in one, many types of crabs and of course at least one or two lobsters in each trap.

The Captain helped with the extraction of the lobsters. He made it look easy, but it is a bit dangerous to stick your hand into a lobster trap that has more than one lobster. They have very sharp claws. One claw is for slicing through prey (or a finger) and the other is the crusher claw for breaking apart what they caught. When you stick your hand in the trap you must keep a close eye on the other creatures so that they don’t make any unexpected moves toward your hand. The Captain did this with ease. He then handed the lobster to IB by holding the creature at the base of where the claws attach to the lobsters’ body. IB used a funny metal tool that opened as you squeezed the ends, sort of like the reverse of a pair of scissors. He placed a very small but wide rubber band on the end of the tool. As he squeezed the handle the rubber band stretched open, so he easily could slip it over the claw and the release it. He repeated with the other claw and the lobster was now much safer to handle.

We had other creatures that were captured in the traps as well. One was a small flounder; a flat fish that appears to swim flopped on its side. The bottom of the fish is pale so as its prey comes at it from underneath it is hard to see against the sky above. It is dark on top to blend into the bottom of the ocean again to hide from predators.

I’m going to cut the rest of the details short for the purposes of the blog, but I will write more later for my own interest.

On to the rest of the day… My new friend, Helen, at the tour booth recommended a couple of places to eat dinner. One was called the “Salt Shaker”, the other a new Italian restaurant that she heard was good, but had not yet tried it out. I elected to stop in at the Salt Shaker. The sign outside read “Ask about our ‘pound and a porter’ special”. The pound referred to a pound of mussels. Although I like mussels, I wasn’t really interested in having a glass of porter, so I ordered clam chowder and a salad. I remember the first time I moved to California many years ago and tried the clam chowder on the Pacific coast. It did not come close to even an average clam chowder in New England. The chowder at the Salt Shaker was fabulous-just what I needed. It had nice chunks of clams, small bits of potatoes and a nice creamy broth that was not too salty. Many west coast restaurants usually salt the broth too much. Plus the clams are not as tasty to me.

Back at my inn I sipped on some wine in my room and did some writing. The common area of the inn was generally deserted. It seemed strange to me for a bed and breakfast inn. Usually there are people hanging out and chatting or playing a game. This was not the case here. So my room felt like a better place to be that night.

The evening was very quite until sometime in the middle of the night. I was jarred awake by a loud crash of thunder. I got up to poke my head out the window only to see a torrential downpour hitting my little deck outside the door leading to the fire escape/deck. The amount and brightness of the lightning was blinding. There were several bolts that must have hit very nearby because the thunder followed almost immediately. I tried going back to sleep, but I only can remember dozing occasionally and being woken again by another load crash. This went on for probably an hour or more.

to be continued...

The trip to Maine was quite exciting for a while. I cruised down the Massachusetts Turnpike with many memories of traveling to college in Lowell, Mass. in the back of my mind. My excitement was quickly diminished as I ran into messy traffic around Lowell. There was some roadwork going on plus an accident to contend with. Once through that mess I entered New Hampshire hoping for better luck. I stopped at a rest area briefly to ask about campsites in Maine. Just as I entered the building a strong thunderstorm attacked us from the west. Rain poured down sending rivers of water through the parking lot. I was satisfied with watching the excitement from inside the little brick building. There were 3 other tourists marveling at the quantity of water coming from the sky. One guy asked if it would last long. I answered in my “all-knowing” New England way, that when they are this strong they don’t usually last long and then the sun comes out. As if I planned the event, exactly that happened. I’m sure the guy went away thinking, “I just met a local who knew exactly what was going on.” Little did he know that I haven’t lived in New England for more than 20 years. But it was true that it was quite common, especially in the middle of the summer.

It was getting late when I entered Maine, so I started to hit some of the side roads to scan for campsites (yeah, the rest stop in New Hampshire was useless for Maine camping). It was nearly dark when I spotted a small sign for “Chewonki Campground”. I took a chance and followed the narrow road. I pulled in and headed for a small wooden office building. Inside I found two young ladies who were very friendly and helpful with setting me up with a campsite. I picked a spot out on the map and headed for my one-night home.

I quickly grabbed my camera after parking the car because the views looked pretty amazing. There was a small boat dock not far away. The tide was just at its lowest, so there was not much water in these little inland waterways. Still it was beautiful to see how calm and quiet the whole area was. This was a kayaker’s heaven. Inland waterways lined with reeds, rushes and thick green woods. I was tempted to spend 2 nights in this spot since they had kayaks for rent, but I wanted to make it up to Bar Harbor and Arcadia National Park.

The next morning I woke up very early at about 6:30 am. The sun was not quite hitting the inland waterways yet. I took some wonderful pictures of very calm water by the boat dock. I love to take pictures of images reflected in water. In fact I’m somewhat obsessed by this. The very calm water made for a very good mirror of the trees and reeds lining the waterway. You can see some of these photos on the link I posted earlier.

Back in my car I followed the main road up towards Bar Harbor. I knew that if I stayed on the coastal route it would take me forever to make it up to Bar Harbor. So I gave up the scenery to expedite my arrival up north.

When I arrived in Bar Harbor I first went right for the water to check out the port area. It was quite busy with tourist checking out the scenery. There was a small park on a hill just above the ocean. It provided a nice overview of the docks below. There were a few fishing boats and many more sailboats docked. To the right of the main harbor was a very nice looking hotel. It was built in a way that it replicated some of the older colonial architecture of the early settlers homes. I thought I would try my luck at Internet surfing off of their connection. It was a strong signal, but they charged $9.95/day. Hunger was beginning to make me pay more attention to my stomach, so I went to find a place to eat. Up the main street a ways was a small breakfast/lunch deli that made delicious looking pastries and omelets that I wanted to try. I ordered a lobster and cheese omelet and sat down outside. I checked for wireless connections again and found one open nearby.

In this particular area, Priceline and the other web sites did not give any good deals. All the hotels were quite expensive. One Days Inn that I stopped at wanted $200. It was probably a 2-star hotel in my estimation. I knew I would be camping that night. Sometime back as I was checking out a map of the area I noticed a ferry that left Bar Harbor and took you to Nova Scotia. I stopped into the office to check the schedule. The next day it would leave at 8:00am. I was told you needed to get there no later than 7:00am to get in line. I bought a round trip ticket to Nova Scotia returning on Friday to Portland, Maine. I could have returned back to Bar Harbor, but this would save me a considerable amount of driving.

Speaking of driving…for those of you keeping score at home, I passed the 5,000 mile mark somewhere in Maine. This would probably end up being a 10,000 mile road trip!! Wow, that’s a lot of miles.

Back to Bar Harbor…this town is on an island called Mount Desert. About 2/5ths of the island is Acadia National Park. This was where I wanted to spend most of my time. The park entry fee would be good for 7 days, even though I would only use it for one.

This park was created by the work of the glaciers carving out chunks of granite and leaving behind several freshwater lakes and rivers. There is a 1500 ft. peak in the middle of the park. I did not go to the top. I wanted to spend most of my time near the windy coastal loop road through the park. The jagged rocks met the ocean at all sides of the island. The red and gray hard rock was quite a contrast to the deep blue clear water of the Atlantic. The menacing rocks have caused countless shipwrecks in the days of the early settlers to the region. Lighthouses and noisy buoys marked the danger areas now.

I stopped at a town called Southwest Harbor to find a nice dinner spot. I was determined to try out some Maine lobster. As I pulled into a public parking area near the water, I overheard a man and a woman talking about the woman’s car. She said it needed a jump. The man asked me if I happened to have cables. Fortunately I could say yes, since I purchased an emergency car kit before I left on the journey.

They both asked me all sorts of questions after they noticed my California license plate. They were very friendly. She was originally from Nova Scotia and told me of all the places I should visit there. Meanwhile her friend was starting her car. She was so thrilled she handed me a $20 bill. I protested and tried to give it back. At one point I tried to put it back into her pocket, but she insisted I keep it. She pointed to a lobster restaurant nearby and told me to have a lobster with the money. I was delighted and did just that. These little experiences are the ones that make traveling special for me. The little unexpected interactions with other travelers or locals make all the “work” of traveling worthwhile.

The dinner place was very rustic. You ordered what size and kind of lobster you wanted, hard or soft shell, and any clams or corn that you wanted. A young lady with a thick European accent scribbled something on a scrap of paper and you moved down the line to order drinks. I almost reminded me of that “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfeld. You had to order and keep moving. The difference here is that the people behind the counter were quite nice.

I watched as they placed your order in a fishnet bag and clipped it onto the edge of a large metal rectangular vat with side-by-side chambers. Another man would come over, clip a piece of paper to the string attached to the fishnet bag and them he dropped the bag into one of the chambers in the vat of boiling water. The string hung over on the outside. One of the orders had 2 bags – one with a lobster and corn, another with clams. They did not put the clams in at the same time, so I’m guessing the cooking time for the clams was quite a bit shorter.

After what seemed like an eternity (I was really hungry now), they called number “91”. I jumped up to the window and happily waved my receipt as if I just won the lottery. The woman serving from the window got a big laugh out of that. She could tell I was happy to have a fresh cooked lobster.

The fancy restaurants give you a bib and shell crackers to break open the lobster parts. This place had no such amenities. You just picked up the lobster and ripped a claw off. It was soft enough to break open with your hands. The claws tasted delicious, especially after being dipped in the drawn butter that was also on the tray. The main body of meat in a lobster is in the tail. I was quite disappointed in the chewy tail meat. The flavor was good, but I think it was a bit over-cooked. However, it still was worth getting all messy over. Since the meal came to just a tad over $20, I dropped a $10 bill in the tip jar as I left. No one noticed this, but they would all get a nice surprise later on.

On my way back to the campsite that I had found for the evening, I toured through more of Acadia National Park. Around every corner there were more beautiful scenes to see. The stunning deep blue ocean crashing up to the rocky coast and heavily wooded land mass was very picturesque. I must have taken a dozen pictures of various parts of the park. It could take weeks to explore a park of this size. I made a mental note of coming back to visit again someday. Next time I would rent a kayak and check out some of the coast from the water.

Early the next morning my alarm went off at 6:30 am. This was the first time on the entire trip that I woke up by an alarm clock. That’s what I call a vacation!! I had prepared ahead the night before by purchasing some pastries and pre-cooking my tea. The ferry experience and Nova Scotia is continued in my next installment.

Mom was busy on my arrival into the Springfield Massachusetts area, so I opted to visit with my older sister, Elaine. Her son, Tony, is the nephew that was getting married this coming Saturday. I met Tony’s Best Man for the first time. He is from Athens, Greece. He came from there to come to the wedding. He had me beat for traveling the longest distance to come to Tony’s wedding.

Friday came and we all joined up at the “Red Rose”. This was in downtown Springfield. The area around Springfield is fairly depressing. Many companies have moved out of Springfield or went out of business. It is like a ghost town in downtown. There are only a couple of restaurants that are open late at night. The remaining part of Main Street is deserted and closed down in the evening. It would be a great place to film a movie. You wouldn’t have to worry about clearing the streets. Then again, who would want to see a downtown like this in a movie? Dinner was fun. I sat next to Kate, the maid of honor. It was nice to get to know her a little before the wedding.

Saturday arrived and time for the big event. The setting was Crestview Country Club. It is a private Golf and tennis club. The wedding location was just inside glass doors that looked down on part of the gold course. Glass windows were directly behind the Bride and Groom. This made for a nice scene, but it was really bad for pictures unless you were one of the 2 professional photographers that were clicking away. They had really strong flashes so the background light was as big of an issue for them.

The ceremony was fairly short. The picture taking afterwards was not. The photographers must have taken a thousand photos out on the grounds of the golf course. Good thing digital cameras were being used. It makes for editing out the mistakes very simple.

I could tell Elaine was very proud of her son, Tony. He and his knew wife, Emily, looked truly happy. They have been together for many years before finally marrying. Chris, the Best Man, pointed this out during the obligatory reception speech. His speech was very nice and heartfelt. His Greek accent made it difficult to follow at points. Mostly, though, we could hear all the words.

Elaine had requested that I take a video of the “first dance”. I was a bit nervous about getting it all just right. I would only have one chance. One of the photographers, Phil, was very helpful to me. He gave me tips on how to avoid the other photographers. He also told me to move very slow and keep the camera as still as possible. After I finished the first few dances I walked around the tables to “interview” a few of the guests. Most people said had the usual congratulations. A few were more talkative and added little details to their congratulation message.

As with most dancing, it takes me a while to get “warmed up”. In other words, I need to have a few drinks, so I don’t feel so self-conscious. I enjoyed pretending like I knew what I was doing. My hardest dance partner to corral was Josie, my niece. She had found a friend in one of her cousins and they were inseparable. Finally later in the evening she agreed to dance with me. It was fun, but I think she was probably more embarrassed than I because she was dancing with this “old guy”. Ryan, her brother stole the show. He caught the garter from Emily and even did the whole traditional part of placing it on the young lady who caught the bouquet. He was not the least bit shy. We all had a lot of fun watching the 2 of them.

So ended the second wedding this summer. What could get better than that? Well we had one more family gathering the following day at my older sister, Elaine’s house. It was quite hot and humid out. But even so, we had one group kicking a soccer ball around, one group throwing a very large, but soft Frisbee and a 3rd pitching tennis balls so they could be hit out into the backyard. A few of the smarter people were sitting in the shade watching the action. An old photo album was being checked out which caused many people to roar in laughter at how young everyone looked.

Eventually we made our way back into the air-conditioned house. We watched my less-than-professional work that I did with the videotaping. Aside from a few times where the picture dropped and cut-off the heads of the dancers, it looked pretty decent. Tony promised he would clean up my mistakes. He is a “video specialist” at Comcast, so I’m sure he can make it look much better. The sound was WAY too low as well, but he said he could fix it.

We said our good-byes and went to back to our respective hotels/houses. The next day was a Monday and I had committed to visit with my Aunt Estelle before heading for Maine. She is the oldest of my Dad’s siblings and arguably my favorite, though I really liked all of them. She would also have my Uncle Hank (Henry, Jr.) visiting. He is the youngest of my Dad’s siblings.

My visit with Aunt Estelle and Uncle Hank was brief. We had lunch at Aunt Estelle’s apartment. Uncle Hank was his usual self. He is quite a prankster. He is always giving Aunt Estelle a hard time in a loving sort of way. It was nice to hear about their kids and grandkids. I had not seen them in quite some time so it was a struggle for me to remember all the names. We took a few photos and I had to get on my way. It was off to Maine for me.

Well I’m WAY behind writing this blog, so why pretend that this is “real” time by writing in the present tense? Today is now Monday August 13th. I am in a little campground just north of the town of Bath, Maine. But let me back up and catch up to where I left off…

I stayed overnight in Niagara Falls at a crappy campground about 10 miles outside of town. It didn’t really matter because I literally just slept there. I drove into the city in the morning as soon as I finished an average breakfast in a local restaurant. I was pleased to see that this day was beautifully sunny.

I grimaced at the $18 charge to park near the Falls. I knew I would only be there an hour or so, but it was still worth it. It was only 10 am, but it was already quite hot. Tourists were everywhere. I could hear all sorts of different languages being spoken. Most of them I did not recognize. From the looks of those speaking them, I guessed that they were European.

There is a very nice walkway all along the Canadian side of the Falls. The “upper” falls (there’s a more official name for it) created a pleasant mist that blanketed those of us walking along the scenic walkway. It was so pleasant I felt like standing in it for a while. So I did.

The view of the water this clear morning was fascinating. You could look straight down at the river streaming by. It gave you the incredible sense of the power of the water streaming over the escarpment (now I’m using that new word all the time!) because it was right below you.

There were tour boats taking tourists up towards the falling water. They all wore the same blue-colored ponchos. They looked as though they were all being taken to a most certain death with the water raining down so hard near them. Surely the captain of the boat knew what he was doing. It must have felt quite cool down below with all the mist blowing on the blue-coated tourists.

Farther down the river was a second falls. This one was wider and just as impressive. There was a platform built out over the water extended from the US side of the Niagara River. I was interested in checking that out until I saw the bridge near it with a line of cars trying to get into the US.

I made it back to my car having taken in enough of the Falls for now. I knew that I would have to do some tricky business with my GPS to get it to route me over a different bridge to the US. I headed south to the next bridge by programming in the nearby town. The wait there was not too bad. The US border guard was much less suspicious than the Canadian one was a few days earlier. He was partly annoyed and partly surprised that I got so much time off from work to have this vacation.

It was a tiring 6-hour drive to my next stop, my friend Arnie’s house. I’m not sure why I was so tired. Maybe it was the humidity that was starting to get to me. Crossing Upstate New York made me feel like I was home again. Much of New England looks like Upstate New York. It is heavily wooded with scattered farms here and there. Sprinkled in among the hills are quaint little towns with usually one main street and a few side streets. The dark green trees lay against the lighter green grasses and farms. There were laid out like a patchwork over a rolling set of hills. It is as if someone laid out a great plan for the farms and towns and nature pushed up hills and plopped down lakes here and there. The result was a roller coater of gorgeous beauty.

That’s one thing I never got used to in most of the rest of the country is how flat it is. I enjoy the rolling hills. It feels like you are on a little roller coaster. You never are quite sure what is over the next little hill. For me this was literally true. I had been to Arnie’s house before, but not from this direction. I had not idea that he was within 8 miles of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

On my way to Arnie’s I found out he would be out of town on business. His wife Allison and son Jeremy were very nice company. So much so, that I decided to spend an evening at their farm. Jeremy had a birthday party planned for up at the corral. Allison had time to catch up all sorts of current and past events. She had been in quite a serious car accident. She was now able to get around on 2 crutches. She was a gracious hostess despite her limited ability to move around. I was certainly disappointed to not be able to talk to Arnie in person. We did have a brief phone conversation.

The next morning I made said quick goodbyes and headed to Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was surprised at how quaint and unassuming the Hall was. The first part you came upon were the new inductees, Cal Ripken, Jr and Tony Gwynn. Now these are 2 guys I have tremendous respect for. Both of them have the type of personalities that you wish all major leaguers had. They never say anything bad about anyone. They go out and do the best they can every day. They give back to their communities. In the case of Cal Ripken, he broke one of the records that most people believed would never be broken…most consecutive games played. He had not missed a single game in over 14 years!! Astounding!!

The rest of the Hall had the usual stuff…old uniforms of great players, history of the game, a display of lockers of today’s teams.

I made my way to the records section. I wanted to see Barry Bonds mug shot. As I stood at the list of “most career home runs” a worker came by and pulled the sign off the wall. He replaced the one that said “756” next to Barry Bonds with “757”. Apparently he hit another one the night before. I noticed there was not an asterisk next to his name.

Satisfied with the baseball experience I proceeded to Massachusetts to meet up with my older sister and Mom. As I entered Massachusetts I put on a selection of James Taylor music. His music reminds me of the Berkshires, since he refers to it in a few songs. More rolling hills of green and then I arrived at my sisters house. He lived in Massachusetts for a while. I’m not sure if he still has a home there somewhere.

To Michigan and Beyond

I woke up at the campsite at about 8 am. It seemed earlier. It was very quiet. The teenagers were obviously sleeping in. I double-checked the time needed to get to the car ferry port. It was a little over 2 hours according to my GPS. I know I was supposed to get to the ferry not less than 1 hour before it left at 1:15. So instead of finding a quaint little breakfast spot in Fish Creek or in the area, I decided to head all the way to Manitowoc. First, I would check-in at the ferry, then get breakfast.

The drive down was more surprising than I had thought. I came up north on a more inland route. This time, heading back south, my GPS took me along a coastal route that was quite scenic. My favorite little town was Apatawoc. There was a small little river that followed along the road and emptied into Lake Michigan right in the middle of the town. It was a little larger than the Door County towns I visited. I liked it because it seemed like a nice place to live and explore. The river was lined on both sides by tall greed reeds (or rushes, I couldn’t tell). It would be ideal for a kayak adventure. I must visit here again someday and bring a kayak.

The ferry was busy, but not overcrowded. I talked to a gentleman from Buffalo New York. I wanted to find out which part of the ferry would be best to park myself. He mentioned that it is big enough to change location if you don’t like where you are. Even so, I deduced that the port (left in direction of travel) side of the ship would be better. We would be traveling east, so this side would be mostly in shade. It was a clear warm day with virtually no wind. This was reassuring since I have heard that Lake Michigan can get some swells that rival ocean swells.

Shortly after take-off there was nothing but blue-green water in all directions to the horizon. If it were not for the lack of salt-water odor you could easily think you are on the ocean - very calm ocean at that. The texture of the water as it spread out to meet the sky was of blue-green ripples that got ever smaller the farther out you looked, until finally it met the clear pale-blue sky in a straight unwavering horizontal line. The biggest lake that I ever saw before this was Lake Tahoe. I wondered to myself how many lakes the size of Tahoe could fit into this lake. I know Tahoe is extremely deep, but this lake was massive in area.

It would be a 4-hour trip to the other side. I occupied myself with reading and doing some of this writing. I attempted to catch a nap, but it was very difficult. Most of the deck chairs out in the open air were cheap little plastic chairs. There were some lounge chairs for napping, but they were in full sun. I know if I napped there, I would be fried to a crisp. There was a family that infiltrated the area near me. There were 2 young boys, probably about 6 or 7 years old and their grandmother. One of the 2 boys was quite fidgety. He kept dragging the plastic chair close to the edge and slightly closer to me. Eventually he was right next to my stuff that I had carried on board. He seemed rather helpless, so I did not mind much. The grandmother, however, was constantly telling what he could and couldn’t do. This was more annoying than anything. I eventually grabbed my stuff and wandered about until it was time to get off the boat.

We docked at the port on the Michigan side on schedule. I had not initially realized that we were now in the Eastern Time Zone. This meant that instead of it now being 4:15 pm it was 5:15 pm. That gave me one less hour of light for driving. They had an interesting method of removing cars from the ferry. The ferry workers would drive each one off and park them for the owners to collect them. Seemed like an easy way for someone to steal a car. The people took longer to come off the boat than the cars. I could have hopped into any number of cars and drove away. But it would be easy for them to track me down, since my car would be left behind☺

I grabbed some quick food and planned my next stopping place. I picked Saginaw, Michigan. Why Saginaw? Well it put me quite a good distance across Michigan. Plus I remembered how my trip started back many weeks ago. I was playing songs with “America” in the title. The Simon and Garfunkel song came to mind again when I saw “Saginaw” on the map. The lyrics for that verse were:

“Michigan seems like a dream to me now.

It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Saginaw.

I’ve come to look for America.”

So Saginaw it was. I needed a hotel for this night since I wanted a shower and comfy bed. So I played an old trick that my friend Craig taught me. You find a cheap hotel in a town and pull up to the building to park. Then you connect to their wireless Internet connection. I guess the less expensive hotels don’t bother with secure networks so it is easy to get on. This worked like a charm. About 30 minutes outside of Saginaw, I connected onto a wireless network at a hotel just off the freeway. I used Priceline.com to get a great price on a 3-star hotel in Saginaw for that night. I plugged the address into my GPS and off I was to a comfortable bed.

It was extremely humid that night, so I had the air-conditioning unit on in the hotel room. It was fairly noisy, but that was ok, since it drowned out the noise of the traffic outside. In the middle of the night I was woken up by a deep sounding crash. It sounded like a tractor-trailer truck running into a brick wall. I could feel the shutter in the building. I went to the curtains and pulled them open. It was a torrential downpour. Light was flashing every few seconds and immediately followed by large booms. We were in the middle of an intense severe thunderstorm and I hadn’t even heard the rain falling because of the air conditioner. I enjoyed the light show for a little while then crawled back to bed.

The morning weather continued to be the same except for the lack of lightning. An incredible amount of rain continued to fall. The parking lot of the hotel looked more like a small lake. The drains could not keep up with the water coming from the sky. My car was parked no more than 30 feet from the door of the hotel. Even so I was soaking wet when I got in to leave.

Needless to say, I did not feel up for sight seeing in Saginaw. I hit the road towards Canada through Flint, Michigan. It was quite a long time before I finally reached the Canadian border. I got the usual suspicious questions from the border patrol:

“Where are you going? How long do you plan on staying in Canada? When was the last time you visited Canada? What are you doing with all that stuff in your car?”

That last one was pretty funny. I had to convince her that I was basically living out of my car. She finally said:

“Have a nice day.” And handed my documents back to me.

The ride from the border over to Niagara Falls was awful. This was probably to worse stretch of driving I had to endure so far. It was 4 pm or so and I guessed that maybe this was like rush hour for the Canadians. The drivers were insane. I felt like I was driving in California in the bay area at rush hour. Plus the roads were wet and a constant mist covered my windshield. There were the usual lane shifters and tailgaters and a couple of those idiots that pass you on the right and squeeze right in front of you before they start tailgating the big semi in front of you. It was nuts.

I finally got some relief when the highway split near Hamilton, Ontario, which by the way has got to be the armpit city of Canada. There were smoke stacks everywhere, smog in the air and not a bit of beauty to be found. It was sad to see. I don’t know if the factories were paper processing plants or limber mills or something else. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Fortunately most of the crazy traffic went north along the lake towards Toronto. It was still busy, but not nearly as crazy going to Niagara Falls. The misty weather continued.

Niagara Falls caught me by surprise. First off, I was quite amazed at how beautiful the Falls actually were. It was quite stunning to see the massive amount of water that fell off the ledge or “escarpment” to the lower river. It pounded the water below so hard that a fine mist was propelled into the air creating a small cloud that slowly dissipated downstream. It was getting quite late, so I would not get to see much of this night. I would have some time tomorrow, though.

I took a turn away from the main road along the water and headed into the town. This is where I was surprised again. The place looked like a small version of Las Vegas. There were casinos, wax museums, haunted houses, huge towering hotels and even a glowing Ferris wheel in the middle of the city. And there were people everywhere on the streets.

I attempted the trick with the Internet access again. The connection worked, but there were no deals to be had here. I had no idea how popular this place was in the summer time. So I opted for a campground about 10 miles out of town. I checked in a quickly went back to the center of the action to have dinner.

I found a bar and grill named “Kelsey’s” at a busy corner. This would be a good people-watching spot. I got a table outside and sat back to watch all the people parading by. There were groups of kids with all the same shirt, Elderly couples, young teenagers in pairs, people of all ages scurrying about and looking at the sights.

Today I said goodbye to Cindy and her family and the plush accommodations that I enjoyed for a few weeks. It was time to start making my way to Massachusetts for wedding number 2 on this trip. I really didn’t want to leave yet. I was getting quite comfortable there. But that’s probably why it felt right to leave. Not to mention I had less than a week to get to Massachusetts and plenty to see along the way. However, I did feel somewhat unsatisfied at the partial completion of my handyman tasks around Cindy’s house. Selling some of their stuff on E-bay was a complete washout. We put 5 items up for sale and none of them sold. The big project was the patio. As it turns out their builder is negotiating with the landscape company to redo the area since it was never properly setup for drainage. So I kind of lucked out there. That would have been very tricky for me to accomplish. It was a bit out of my handyman capabilities.

It took me until about 1:00 pm before I finally actually left Mequon. I headed up the west coast of Lake Michigan towards Door County (pronounce the “oor” like in poor). My plan was to spend a couple days in that area, head back down to a town called Manitowoc to catch a ferry across the middle of Lake Michigan. From the other side I would head across through Canada and to Niagara Falls. After a day there I would cross through upstate New York and drop down into Massachusetts.

It was just a short 3-hour drive to get to the southern part of Door County. This area is referred to by my guidebook as the “Cape Cod” of Wisconsin. It is similar to the Massachusetts stretch of land that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. They are both peninsulas with water on 3 sides. There are many quaint little towns dotting the coast on both sides. Many of the towns have preserved some of the historical landmarks such as old homes of early settlers (the white ones, anyway). They both definitely cater to the tourists that stream in every year in the summer months.

There are quite a few differences, though. Door County is shaped like a thumb that sticks out into Lake Michigan. The base of the thumb on the southwest corner is where Green Bay is located. Actually, the thumb has a sliver of water that cuts it in two at Sturgeon Bay. Most people generally refer to Door County as the part North of Sturgeon Bay even though it begins before that. And as most people know Lake Michigan is fresh water. Cape Cod is surrounded by salt water. This creates quite a different feel at the shore. Door County has lots of rocks and green algae built up at the edges of the shoreline. There ARE areas where there are sandy beaches. My guess is that they trucked the sand in for the tourists, though. But there are areas where the sand has been naturally created by the wind sweeping across the land that was de-forested.

Regardless of their differences, this part of Wisconsin is very beautiful indeed. It is heavily wooded right up to the shore of the lake. There are very few farms that I saw in this area. Even though from my reading it had been logged for many years, it has grown back to look very natural. Fortunately the weather cleared as I drove farther north. My guidebook mentioned that the sunsets were fabulous, especially at Peninsula State Park, where I had secured a camp spot for 2 nights. I was looking forward to taking in a nice sunset.

After checking in to my camp spot, I decided to take a hike through part of the park. There are many bike and hiking trails throughout the park. Parts of the trails were packed whitish dirt. Other parts were actually paved. There were occasional orange diamonds marked on trees about 10 feet off the ground. I correctly guessed that these were markers for cross-country skiers. The trail was quite busy with bikers. I seemed to be one of the few on foot. My hike took me a total of about 2.5 miles. It felt good to get some exercise. Not that I didn’t have opportunities in the past few weeks, but I chose to be lazy.

After a short rest I took a ride through the park. I found an old lighthouse that was mildly interesting. The best spot was a tall tower on the northern part of the park. It was probably about 4 stories high. The views from here were awesome. The sun was starting to sink into the western sky. Below and to the west was a cove that was calmer than the open lake. There was a group of maybe 5-6 kayaks making there way along the shoreline. Kayaking in this area is definitely tricky. If you get stuck out in the open water you could come across strong winds that make it difficult to navigate. These particular kayakers obviously knew what they were doing. They were in very calm water along a heavily wooded shoreline with late afternoon sun streaming down. It looked like great fun. Farther to the north was a great view of what one of the other folks called Horseshoe Island. A sailboat glided back and forth between the island and the shore beneath the tower. Off to the northeast was a glimpse of Ephraim (not sure how to pronounce this one). Many sailboats sparsely populated the coast in the bay near Ephraim.

Heading into town I ran into the same issue that I encountered on a Saturday night in Chicago – lots and lots of people waiting to get into restaurants. Again I gave up on that idea. I found the Fish Creek Market in the small town of Fish Creek. I bought a California bottle of Pinot Noir and some cheese and headed back to camp. In the back of my cozy little van I sipped good wine, ate some good Wisconsin cheese and started writing this entry. My sister, Cindy, will no doubt laugh that I drank the wine out of a small clay teacup that my friend Jim K. gave me as a gift before I left Placerville.

On my way back to the campsite a beautiful sunset was developing. I parked in one of the west-facing day parking lots. Many people also came to sit and worship the setting sun. There was one couple sitting on a large log near the water, only their silhouettes were visible. They made for an interesting foreground for one of my photos. The sun sank into a layer of thin clouds on the horizon. The power of the rays burned through the clouds but not before being changed into an orange glowing ball. The clouds varied from white puffy cotton balls of varying sizes to dark layers of gray lower to the horizon.

Of course now it is Sunday and I’m catching up again. Sunday morning started out weird. I woke up to get a drink of water only to find someone curious about my van. The middle-aged woman wore a vest of green with some badges attached. I was guessing that she was the camp host checking up on my car. She walked right up to it and tried looking into the back tinted window. I would have opened the door, but I was in my underwear and not ready to welcome unwanted guests. She looked around a bit more, and then walked on. I found out later that I was supposed to have been given a sicker for the front window to show that I paid the state park fee. Weird!

Since today was going to be my only full day in Door County I wanted to explore as much of the coastline as I could. I made my way north through the towns of Ephraim, Sister Bay and Ellison Bay before heading west across to Northport. This is where you can catch a car/passenger ferry to Washington Island. The weather started out as overcast on this day. Now it began to look worse with darkening clouds coming from the south. I decided to forgo the ferry ride. This turned out to be a good decision. The clouds began to let out a gentle sprinkle. Determined to push on despite the weather, I headed down the Lake Michigan side of the peninsula (also referred to the “lake side” as opposed to the “bay side” or Green Bay side).

This side of the peninsula had a decidedly different feel to it. There were far fewer tourists, but no less beauty in the scenery. One explanation that I can think of for the quieter scene on this side is because the lake is a bit rougher water than the bay side. The towns also don’t seem quite as quaint as the other side. Midnight Bay was my favorite spot. Deeply carved out of a small chunk of the lakeside of the peninsula it actually has some nice sand beaches along it. Much of the bay is inaccessible from the road due to private homes along the shore. I imagine these are very pricey summer homes for the wealthy Chicagoans or maybe people of wealth from Mequon☺

I managed to get in a couple 2-mile hikes through a couple different state parks even though it rained on and off. Newport State Park is less developed than the others. It is geared toward backpackers and walk-in campers. There are over 30 miles of trails through the park. Some wind back and forth through the thick forest. Still others hugged the coastline of Lake Michigan. I opted for a trail that started along the shore and turned back into the woods until it reached the parking lot where I started. Much of the scenery was similar along the coast – stretches of long rock beaches with occasional marshy areas filled with bright green reeds.

I headed back to the Peninsula State Park to check-in to a different campsite. Mine was not available for 2 consecutive nights so they made me check-in each day. On the way back, I decided to shunpike. What? You never hear of that word? It is a term for avoiding the main roads (ostensibly to avoid a toll as in a turnpike). I found a small-undeveloped County Park. They were not kidding when they said undeveloped. The only amenity available was the road. It was a gorgeous dirt road, though. It winded through a very thick forest of maple, cedar and birch. I stopped near the end of the road. There were no other cars in sight. I found a trail, which led down to the water. It was quite steep, winding back and forth among the jagged limestone rocks. I learned that the limestone bluffs in this area are the beginnings of the Niagara Falls escarpment. I’m not too sure what that means, so give me a minute while I look it up…Here is what Merriam-Webster says:

• a long cliff or steep slope separating two comparatively level or more gently sloping surfaces and resulting from erosion or faulting

So I guess the Niagara Falls area is part of a large escarpment reaching way over into Wisconsin. I should read more about this since I am actually on my way to Niagara Falls. So back to this park…near the waters edge was a good view of this limestone escarpment. It was made up of large blocks of limestone almost as if some sloppy mason built it. Some of the blocks were covered with green algae or maybe it was a thin layer of moss. Erosion caused some of the blocks to fall. There were a few cedar trees that clung precariously to the cliff. The base of some of these trees actually rested on the cliff and the root system bent toward the hillside to seek water. It reminded me of some of the cedars in the Monterey, California area.

I rested briefly at the new campsite. I scoped out my new neighbors. Oh, oh…teenagers across the way. I bet they will be making noise tonight. In general, though most people respected the “quiet hours all day” atmosphere. I sat at my picnic table and finished off the wine. I skimmed through a book on the region to try and pick out a restaurant. Egg Harbor had one that served beer brewed at their site. This sounded perfect.

The Shipwrecked restaurant was right on the main road through Egg Harbor. It had nice outdoor seating, which I elected to take advantage of. It was quite a busy place but the service was fast. I ordered the perch plate. It was deep fried, which I guess I didn’t notice until it arrived. It was decent, but nothing special. The beer was good, so I ordered a second.

I was getting quite a kick out of watching 4 teenage girls sitting next to me. They were flirting with the handsome young male waiter that was serving them. He was enjoying it. One of the young ladies was trying to sell some football tickets to the waiter. I didn’t catch which teams were playing. He had them write a phone number on the back of the bill so he could contact them. What a nice tip for him!

I went back to the campsite with a full stomach. It was time to call it a night. There would be no nice sunset on this overcast day. The teenagers across the way made quite a racket for a while, but it was still reasonably quiet. Tomorrow would be the day to catch the ferry across Lake Michigan. I was hoping for nice weather.

Weekend in Chicago

Wow! Where should I start? Let’s try going backwards, like that crazy movie, which I hated. What was the name of that movie that each new scene actually occurred chronologically after the one before it? I think it was “Memento”. It drove me crazy. Let me see if I can drive you crazy.

I’m on the train back to Milwaukee from Chicago. I caught the 5:08pm train instead of the original planned 8:00pm. Why? - Because I had a bit of a headache from the night before. I had tried to make it to the Museum of Industry and Science. After getting off the green line of the “El” at Garfield, I headed west towards the museum. I had a bit of an uncomfortable feeling as I walked through Washington Park. It was not clear to me initially what the problem was. Then I realized I was basically a minority in this part of town. I must have lived in predominantly white Placerville a little too long. It’s not that I haven’t lived around black people before. I grew up in a city in Massachusetts that had a large black population. Even so, the city was still fairly segregated to white and black areas. The integrated school system in Springfield was where you met and mingled with people of other races.

I decided to take a short break on the grass in the shade of a nice big tree in the park. I reviewed my little guidebook. It looked like I was still some distance from the Museum of Science and Industry. This was the last place I planned on visiting before I left the city. Faced with trying to find a taxi or navigating the buses, I decided to change plans and head back to Cindy’s. I called my friend Gregory who had just called me a moment ago while I was on my way to the Garfield stop. I didn’t answer the phone only because I knew that he would not be able to hear me. The train ride gave me a glimpse of what is the “far south” of Chicago. I could see “Cellular One Field” where the Chicago White Sox baseball team plays. Also visible was “Soldier Field” where the Chicago Bears Football Team plays. Mostly, though, the scene was filled with neighborhoods of brick buildings of apartments. Many of the ones near the tracks had the same type of wooden staircase facing the tracks with a little porch barely big enough to put a few chairs outside. The yards were quite small and usually filled with odds and ends such as kid’s toys or a picnic table and chairs. Though most of the buildings look fairly weathered, I would not call any of the housing slum-like. It was simply old, but fairly well kept. I tried to sleep on the train knowing that it would be at least a 30-minute ride.

-------------------------------------

Union Station is the name of the downtown hub for the local rail system and Amtrak. It is rather odd that the local “ELevated train” or rapid transit system does NOT directly connect to this hub. You have to walk a couple blocks to pick up the EL. I came to Union Station first on this Monday morning because I had to figure out what to do with my suitcase. I certainly did NOT want to lug around a suitcase all over downtown. Fortunately the Amtrak Baggage Lady (hmmm that doesn’t sound very nice)…OK the Amtrak representative at the baggage check-in told me I could send my bag to Milwaukee even before I took the train. I didn’t expect this since they don’t let you do this on airplanes. But I guess the security risk is much less on a train. This was a relief to me. She also said I could take any of the trains back to Milwaukee. Having been relieved of my bag I made my way down the streets to find the closest green line stop. As I stepped out into the light of the streets I became aware that the light was quite annoying- a typical reaction from someone who is hung-over. Too bad I didn’t have sunglasses. The people on the streets looked quite different than the previous 2 days. It was a Monday, so there was a mix of business people and tourists like myself. There was not even close to the same amount of people on the weekends, which was a relief to me. I found the green line stop and headed to the “far south” on Chicago.

-------------------------------------

Stumbling out of bed after a very late night, it hit me right away that I not only stayed up WAY too late, but also had one too many beers the night before. I tried to drink lots of water before I went to bed, but it was not enough to make up for the alcohol consumption. Some aspirin and a very hot shower helped a bit. I packed up my stuff and checked out of the hotel. The ride into downtown was painful. I just wanted to sleep. The pain in my temples was very annoying. It was a small price to pay, though, for the fun that was had the night before.

-------------------------------------

I took the red line toward the Roosevelt stop. From the address I was given, this was as close that I could get to Buddy Guy’s Legends Bar. Well I overshot the address by about 5 blocks. Not a problem, since it was still somewhat early for live music. If you didn’t know Buddy Guy or have a guidebook to inform you, this bar would look like any other dive bar in the outskirts of the city. It was on a corner with a plain blue and white cheap-looking sign. I entered and was told by the man at the door that there would be a $10 cover charge that they would walk around and collect at 8:30. This was only 30 minutes from when I arrived. I scoped out the place first before going to the bar to order a draft beer. It was dark inside. A long bar was to the left along the wall as you entered. The center of the large room opening to the right was filled with cheap round tables and 3-4 chairs around each. Beyond this section was an area of 4-5 pool tables. To the left and back farther away from the stage area were a few more seats crammed into the corner. A second and smaller bar was adjacent to this section. Looking back to the stage you could see that this was a no-frills place. There were music monitors along the front of the stage, which looked permanent. A drum set had been partially set up (no cymbals).

After I grabbed a beer, I found a table one row away from the stage. A young lady walked by with a box of popcorn. That looked good! I decided to order some food. The service by the waitress was quite slow. She was very pleasant though and I wasn’t in a huge hurry. I watched as the keyboard player setup his equipment. He and the other musicians entered from door adjacent to the stage that led directly out on to the main street-Not much of a “back stage”, but it is all they seemed to need.

As I sat by myself and ate my “Cajun Crawfish Quesadilla” (yeah you read that right) I could not help but wonder if anyone would ask to share my table. I started to feel a little awkward as I glanced around to see if there was anyone I could invite over to my table. 3 women joined one other lucky guy who was sitting by himself. They did not seem to know him. I was disappointed because I was much more handsome than he was☺. The food was actually quite good. I ordered beer number 2 or 3 (already losing track). As I looked around after eating I noticed that the place was really filling up. Just before the music was about to start a couple, probably in their 50s, and one of their relatives asked if they could join me. I was delighted to have some company. The couple lived down the street and the relative was from Texas. I told him of my brief stay in Texas years ago. He was sympathetic and told me that I lived in the 2 worse cities in all of Texas. I didn’t want to annoy my new friend, but I didn’t think much of Dallas either (his hometown). The music began with 5 of the 6 members playing “Crossroads” by Eric Clapton. These guys were seasoned pros. They were a very tight band. After the first number they introduced “Big James”. It was easy to see how he got his name. He was a very large man. He had a towel over his shoulder embroidered with “Big James”. He played trombone and sang. The guy to his immediate left played sax. Behind the sax player was the bass player. Farther to his left was the keyboard player. To James’ right was the lead guitarist and as always the drummer was in the back.

The songs that were written by Big James were not quite as impressive as their cover songs. Still everyone seemed to be having a great time getting into the rhythms. At one point during a song later in the set (and after a few more beers) I glanced over to my left at a table about 20 yards away. A woman who was enjoying the music as much as I was gave me that knowing smile as if to say, “isn’t this cool?” I’m fairly certain she was not hitting on me, since her boyfriend was sitting right with her. It reminded me of an incident many years ago at a Grateful Dead concert. I was right up at the stage in front of Jerry Garcia. In the middle of one of his long improvisational guitar solos, I found myself drifting off into the music. His fingers would effortlessly glide up and down the guitar and make impossibly wonderful sounds. I looked up at his face from this dreamy space and he gave me that same knowing smile, like “isn’t this cool, man?” I may have been hallucinating, oops, wrong word, I may have been imagining it, but I swear that’s what he was saying to me. Either way I really DID think it was cool that someone could make me feel so great just by playing music.

The band took a break. I knew I had to say good-bye to my friends or I would never make it back to the hotel. Oh, I forgot to mention, Buddy Guy actually showed up at the bar. Several people ran over to him to shake hands, get autographs and take pictures with him. He was quite cordial to everyone. He hung out for part of the night and sat at the bar watching a baseball game. Little did I know that the night before Eric Clapton himself showed up and played for a while on stage with Buddy Guy. I missed him by one night! Damn! Anyway so I made it out to the street and found the green line back to the blue line and back to the hotel. I think I slept part of the way, but I’m not entirely sure.

-------------------------------------

I had been to the Hancock Tower the day before, but decided not to go up. There was quite a long line and I was tired. So getting back to the same place was easy on this the second day in Chicago. As I walked to the intersection of Chicago and Michigan Ave I saw the same man that was there the day before. He was nicely dressed with one of those hats that you wear on a safari. You can see his photo in my photo collection mentioned in my blog elsewhere. If you missed it, click here.

Blog Photos - Summer 2007

He held a handmade sign that talked about the “second coming”. I had to admire his dedication, but I also felt sorry for him only because I don’t think there is going to be a “second coming”. But what do I know.

After getting inside the Hancock tower, the casual visitor (like me) is deceived into thinking that you will soon be at the top. 45 minutes later, I was at the top. They stall you in a real tricky way by making you walk through a maze of ropes directing you to go back and forth. Then they get you to watch a 12-minute movie about how the tower was built. Finally the ascent to the top is over in a mere 60 seconds.

The view on this day was absolutely stunning. As you will see in the photo link, the views are almost surreal. They say that on a clear day like this you can see 4 states. Let me see…Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois and I guess Michigan. It all just looks like urban sprawl to me. The most interesting stuff is what you can see close by.

-------------------------------------

Millennium Park is fairly new in Chicago. It is part of the whole Grant Park area near Lake Michigan. This area was by far my most favorite spot to visit in the city. On Saturday there were crowds streaming to the beachfront to watch the fireworks. It was puzzling because the fireworks were scheduled to start at 10:15, yet people were setting up their spots before sunset. There were BBQ grills getting fired up, blankets laid down to cordon off areas and scores of folks with their lawn chairs. I didn’t make it for the fireworks display. I got too tired and headed for the hotel. But that’s yesterday. I’m getting “ahead” of myself.

Inside Millennium Park are many metal sculptures. There are some old I-beams twisted into an unusual shape. There is an amphitheatre where they have weekend concerts. Several fountains are scattered about. The two most interesting places to me are “The Bean” and the rectangular water fountains.

The Bean is a polished metal bean-shaped structure that is bent in the middle such that one can walk under it. Now that may not sound like much, but the reflections of the people and the Chicago skyline are very impressive. You really must see the photos of this to really get the idea of how interesting it is. It is a simple design, yet fascinating to look at. The reflections from underneath are really wild and twisted.

The rectangular water fountains (I don’t know the official name for them) are 2-50 foot high structures made out of glass bricks. Water pours down on all sides, but is stronger on the sides that face the opposing structure. The two faces that “look” towards each other display video images. Sometimes there are faces and sometimes there are waterfalls. There are kids everywhere screaming with delight at getting wet in the spray of the cascading water. The most exciting part for them is the large spigot (yeah, that’s the right spelling. I looked it up ☺) that opens up at seemingly random times to drown anyone standing in its path. All the kids watching the video image heighten the excitement. They know that once the face of the video puckers their lips, that water will start flying out of the mouth of the image superimposed on the rectangular face. The screams of delight from the kids are wonderful to behold.

As I got off the train on Saturday, late morning, I decided that it was time to hit up a Chicago Pizza place. I had asked around for which one was best, but no one could pin down any one place for me. I took a chance on a place called “Giordano’s”. There were at least 2 of them that I ran across in the city. I decided to have lunch at the one off of Michigan Ave. and Jackson. I sat at the bar so I didn’t have to wait to be seated.

The bartender convinced me to get a smaller pizza than what was on the menu. It was nice of him to be considerate of wasting food. I wasn’t going to carry around leftovers all day long. He was wise to that as well. He was a pleasant young guy. I would guess maybe 25-26 years old, short spiked black hair and thin closely cropped sideburns. He kept messing with a paper clip and a pair of needle-nose pliers. I asked him what he was up to. He mentioned that someone had broken off the key that opens up the refrigerator for the kegs. That meant that no one could change the kegs out as they ran out. He was trying to rig up a way to pick the lock. This is the guy that told me of Eric Clapton showing up at Buddy Guy’s bar the night before.

The pizza arrived after quite some time. It was decent, but not better than a deep-dish pizza I had one in San Francisco. I happily consumed it all, though.

In case you are lost, it’s Sunday morning. I just got off the blue line from the airport and headed for the Sears Tower. This was one of the top sites on my list to see in Chicago. I tried to get to the top the day before, but the line was outside on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to go THAT bad. On this day, I made it directly to the ticket floor with no wait. What I did NOT know is that even AFTER buying the ticket, I still had to wait about 45 minutes before actually walking out on to the viewing area. Once there at the top, I was quite impressed with the view. As with the Hancock Tower, which I haven’t seen yet ☺, the images of the buildings were quite unreal. My words will not make much of an impact here, so look at the pictures I have posted.

The trip on the train to Chicago was very pleasant. There is something so relaxing about train travel. The gentle rocking back and forth of the cars as they move along the track gives you that comforting feeling like being rocked in a rocking chair. The click, click of the metal wheels crossing the joints in the tracks adds to the nice rhythms. You can relax and read a book, write, use your laptop, etc. - no worries about traffic congestion.

Once inside Union Station, it took a few minutes to figure out I needed to walk over to the “Elevated” train to pick up the blue line to the airport. It took 45 minutes to get out to my hotel at the airport. I wonder why the 45-minute time slice kept repeating itself all weekend. Once I checked in to the quite plush Hilton Hotel, I headed back to downtown. Once again, 45-minutes later, I arrived at the very crowded center of Chicago. People were streaming to the lakeside. There was a fireworks display planned for that evening. I knew I would be way too tired to wait until 10:15 to watch the display. I was amazed that folks were setting up for the display and it wasn’t even dark out yet.

I decided to walk around the Grant Park area. This is a large area near Lake Michigan with fountains, green spaces and interesting sculptures. Within this park or maybe adjacent to it is Millennium Park. This includes the great fountains that spew water on all sides. I enjoyed watching the kids playing around the water. I did NOT have my camera on this day, but I regretted it. The other cool sculpture is the “Bean”. I spent some time there watching other people take pictures of each other.

I took a long walk down what is know as the “Millennium Mile” which is basically a mile of high-end shops filled with stuff no one really needs.

I made a half-assed attempt at finding a place for dinner. It was really frustrating. There were so many people waiting in lines at all the best places. I was not in any mood to wait in line and then sit at a table by myself, so I headed back to the blue line. I ate a pretty decent dinner at the hotel and crashed in my room. My first day in Chicago was not the best, but I felt I would recuperate tomorrow.

So there you have it…the longest entry in this blog and backwards to boot. Hope you didn’t fall asleep reading it☺

To be honest, I don't even remember what I did on these 3 days. I'm sure I watched some more tennis. I'm sure I did a few more jobs around Cindy's house. I'm sure I got up late, again!

Oh yeah...I started thinking about spending a weekend in Chicago. I was shocked to see how expensive the hotels where/are. Downtown you could spend $300-$400 easily. But I got a cheap, but 4 star hotel out at the airport for $95/night. It turned out that it was a 45 minute "rapid" transit ride into town, but it was still worth it.

My next entry is about my adventures in Chicago and oh, I finally got some photos posted to Google's picture service, Picasa. So If you would prefer the visual tour, you can go to this link and see all the photos do date of my trip, including Chicago:

Blog Photos - Summer 2007

The last entry may have seemed a bit serious to some. But in retrospect it is part of my discovery on this time away from "routine" life.

Some of my loyal blog followers have made comments that have steered where I'm going next in this entry. As it should be. This should be, ideally, a collaborative process.

Do you remember many entries ago where there was a bank robbery that I came upon? Well if you have not caught on yet, anything in this blog that I write in the italics font is purely fictional. The taxidermy story was one. The bank robbery was another. But as my good friend, Liesl pointed out, I left everyone hanging in the bank robbery. I didn't say how it got resolved. Until now... As you may recall our hero (me) had disarmed the one robber keeping guard over the hostage in the back of the bank. There was a commotion in the front of the bank that brought the other 2 robbers out to the front of the bank. At this point, none of us yet knew what caused both men to go to the front of the bank.

Time was of the essence.I quickly looked around to access what we could use to help take out the rest of the robbers. Near the unconscious robber on the floor was a black duffel bag. I asked one of the other hostages if they knew what was in the bag. The said they did NOT, but they knew the robbers brought it in. I reached over and unzipped the long top zipper. Inside I found 2 more shotguns and several bags presumably for stashing the cash.

I reached into the bag and handed each gun to 2 eager hostages. They where both shotguns. Both men that volunteered to help were familiar with using these types of guns. that was a big relief to me since I never used a gun before in real life [disregard the fact that this is not "real" life].

The 3 hostage gunmen needed to make up a plan really quick. We squatted in the back room and whispered to each other about what we should do. One man said that we need to peek out in front to access what's going on. We all agreed to take a look and reconvene back in our same spot.

We quietly moved up to the counter that separated the back of the bank from the front. We each in turn took a quick peek over the top. I motioned for us to move back to our original spot. From what we all saw it was obvious somewhat had set off an alarm or called 911. There were police mobilizing out in front of the bank. I suggested that we yell out to the robbers in front and tell them we have 3 weapons pointed at them and their man in back was down and out. As one of the other men pointed out, this wold be very risky. We would have to be prepared to actually follow through on any threat. We agreed to go ahead with the plan and if threatened we would shoot low.

My heart was pounding at just the thought of shooting at someone. I started to feel a cold sweat on my forehead. My hangs were clammy, but I felt I could do it if I had to. The 3 of us got into position. We all had a clear view of the robbers in front. One of the other guys with a strong burly voice was elected as the one to yell out to the guys in front. It was time to make out move.

"We have 3 guns pointed at you! Drop your weapons and raise your hands! Your other buddy back here is unconscious. Don't make a wrong move or we will shoot. The smaller of the 2 men immediately panic and dropped is gun. The other guy delayed, so Mr. Burly man chimed in again:

"Drop it! We know how to use these guns."

The second man screamed and turned to fire at us. I completely freaked out and ducked behind the counter. Fortunately the other 2 guys were not as chicken as me. They each took a shot before the robber was even able to pull the trigger. He was hit in several places in the legs and torso. His gun went off, but harmlessly shot a whole in the ceiling. He spun and dropped to the ground screaming in pain.

Now with several police and swat people outside we were far from free of danger. They had no idea of what just happened. All they knew at this point was they heard gun shots. We knew they would be on edge and ready to fire with anyone that had a weapon. We needed to contact them immediately before they stormed our bank.

The bank manager pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. They connected him with the police outside after what seemed like hours. I'm sure they just wanted to be sure they were talking to a real hostage. The police gave the manager instructions on how to surrender. We were to throw all our weapons into the area of the main lobby. Then one at a time we would have to walk out the door with our hands held high. Any deviation would result in shots being fired at any suspicious activity. This seemed somewhat risky, but understandable.

We all looked around for a volunteer. The young lady with the crying kid wanted to go first. It sounded like a good idea, since they seemed least likely to be dangerous. As she started to the front door with her child, there was a sound of commotion behind me. A man yelled:

"He has a gun, get down!"

I spun around just in time to see the man I beat up firing a gun at me. The pain in my chest felt like a hard punch combined with a sharp piercing knife blade that stung me. I collapsed backwards onto the floor. I laid on the cold marble floor looking up at the overhead lights of the bank. The coolness of the marble seemed to sink into my body as the lights appeared to get dimmer. I heard muffled commotion and voices. Then the lights got dimmer and dimmer and went out.

OK, well maybe that wasn't such a "light" story, but as an epilogue everyone else got out of the bank safely. Our hero died on the floor.

This entry will be a diversion from "What Gene did today". Hey it's my blog and I can do what I want!

My friend, Ed, made a comment one time right before I left on my trip regarding retirement (he is retired as well). He said that the one thing about being retired is that your are "No longer driving the Bus".

Now there are lots of interpretations that can be made of this statement. The most obvious (and the one I think Ed was mostly referring to) is that you don't have money coming in from a regular paycheck. You need to rely on investments. Of course, you can still get some kind of pay, if you choose. But for me it would have to be something I REALLY love. Most of those things require a special talent that I don't have...yet. Like performing music, singing, writing a novel (I'm working on the last one).

But I've come to realize that the other interpretation that Ed was alluding to was that YOU have to plan your day. Everyday. Sure there will be some days that life will set some things in place for you. In fact if you sit around things will pop up that you hadn't even thought of but require your attention.

This has kind of hit me recently because I've had a few days recently where I had no particular plan. Suddenly I realize everyone is getting ready for bed. I turn to my computer to type the days events and I have only a few boring items to report. The other reason this is starting to bubble up in my consciousness is because of my daughter, Maya. Since graduating from high school a few months back, she has not found a job. She has many days unplanned and unstructured. Despite attempts to encourage her to look for a job, for whatever reason, she has not landed a job. I know it must be starting to get uncomfortable for her to have so many days of not being a "bus driver". Hopefully she is coming to the same realization as I am.

So what to do? I suppose I could find a driver. What would that look like for me? Or I could make up stuff that starts to organize a typical day for me so that I have a template to start.

Is that real or artificial/unnatural?

One thing that is clear is that you need an underlying goal or purpose that drives some of your activities. Without that I think you may end the day with an empty unsatisfied feeling. I had that for so many years when I HAD to raise a family and provide for them. With that no longer there it is harder than I realized to find that new purpose. I foolishly thought "writing" would be enough. I have found that I need to have a more active part of my day. The writing will come in time. But even the writing has to be scheduled or it won't get done.

So I'm on a new kick...to organize a regular part of each day to do some physical activity, then write later in the day. With Cindy cooking each day and the few times I've gone out to eat, I know I am putting on too much weight. I will be huge by the end of this vacation!

But there is more as well. The larger purpose behind my writing has to be looked at. But that will percolate up in the days to come. But maybe the process of writing can be an end in itself. Much to ponder...

After the Cubs came a few days before I got on the phone to Cindy before I left Chicago. I knew that the Giants and Bonds would be traveling to Milwaukee next. I asked her to check on tickets. Once I got home that night she said everything was sold out. She even tried to get the Luxury box that Jeff's company had at Miller Park, but it wasn't available. I was only slightly disappointed since I got to see a good game just a few days ago.

When I came down from my room in the morning I was roaming around the house to see who was at home. I came into the den and Josie and Ryan where there on the 2 computers. They both jumped up at the same time and said "We got tickets to the game today! The Luxury box." I still wasn't quite sure it was true until Cindy confirmed that the box became available for some reason that escapes me at the moment.

But before all of that...Josie had a tournament to play about an hour north. I went with Jeff, Cindy and Josie to watch her first match. Josie started slow and fell behind in the first set. She could not come back and lost 6-4. She was hitting the ball pretty well, but so wasn't the other girl. Both girls were not showing the slightest bit of a let down. They were content to keep the ball in play until the other player made a mistake. Josie hit a few shots that were angled so far to her opponents forehand that she could not return the ball. This wasn't a fluke either. She did it several times, much to the dismay of her opponent.

Josie won the second set 7-5. The final set in this tournament was a 10 point tie-breaker. It was a very tense last set. The girls showed incredible toughness. You could tell they were both very tired, but neither would give up. Josie edged out the other girl 10-8 in the tie-breaker. We were all so proud of her effort. You could tell she was happy too. This put her in the finals which would be played at about 2 in the afternoon. She had 3 hours to rest and get ready.

Jeff and I headed to the game with Ryan and some of his friends. Cindy and Josie would be joining us later after her finals match. We arrived at the park about 30 minutes before game time. With our "front row" parking pass we were able to skip past all the other poor folks who were stuck in the traffic getting into the park. We made it to the Luxury Suite entrance. It was a short wait to get inside. We entered the luxury suite hallway and we were greeted by a very pleasant lady who quickly scanned our tickets and gave us directions.

We entered suite 20, the last one on the right. I was surprised at how close to the field it was. We were just above the lower box section. This ballpark had 2 floors of luxury boxes. We were on the lower one. I was happy to see 2 tubs full of iced down beer. The refrigerator was literally stuffed with soft drinks and more beer. So this is how the other half lives? Outside the glassed in portion of the suite where 2 rows of seats. The boys quickly grabbed a drink and sat in the front row.

The game was quite a one-sided affair. This was mostly due to the incredible pitching of a young 23-year old Giants pitcher, Lincecum. He pitched 8 scoreless innings. I was a bit disappointed that they pulled him in the 9th. It is rare these days that managers let pitchers throw a whole game. I guess they are concerned about over using their arms. At this kid's age, that seemed to make sense. The Giants won 8-0. No homers for Barry on this day.

Part way through the game, Jeff got a call that Josie won her tournament! She is now rated number 1 in the state in her age group - well deserved. When she arrived we all gave her a big congratulations. She was surprisingly perky. Cindy said she slept the entire way to the game (about 45 minutes).

It was a great ending to another fun day of sports.

Cindy and I decided to go to a golf driving range nearby with Josie. We each whacked a bucket of balls. Josie did quite well for not playing that much. Cindy was hitting well too. I'm still a work in progress. I did have few good shots, though.

Cindy and I returned later to play the par 3 course next to the range. Cindy was very smooth and consistent at her game. She said she hasn't played much which of course did not make me feel much better. I lost 2 balls on the first 3 holes. Once I DID make it to the green, it took me 3-4 shots to get the darn ball into the hole. What a frustrating game!!

As the 9 holes progressed I was looking forward to hole number 9:) I actually started hitting some pretty decent long shots. My putting continued to be a disaster. I managed to par 1 hole, that's it!

On the 8th hole I hit my tee shot about 10-15 feet farther than Cindy. So she took her second shot from about 60 yards away. I saw it go up with very nice trajectory toward the pin. On the green, rolling with good speed directly at the pin, then "kerplunk." Right smack in the hole for a birdie! I ran over to Cindy to give her a high 5. That was a pro shot all the way.

As we came up to the next whole we came upon a man with his 7 year old son waiting to tee off. He said to Cindy..."that was a heck of a shot." We all had a good laugh at Cindy's skill in pulling that one off.We finished off the 9th hole playing with the 7 year old. Dad was just being his caddy. Needless to say the 7 year old got a better score than I did.

Maybe I should stick to tennis (against very young kids!!).