19 Search Results for "spinning"

• Jimmy, We Hardly Knew Ya

  • From: Kruzer57
  • Description:

    The site of James Dean's fatal car crash. Dean was coming down Polomino Pass, in his new Porsch Spyder from behind where I'm standing on California 46 (then called CA466). Donald Turnupspeed was coming east on the same highway(in front of where I'm standing) when he made the sweeping left turn on CA41. The two cars collided at the intersection , with Dean's car spinning and coming to rest along the fence in the right center of this picture. And his legend began. This intersection is just  about a mile west from Cholame, Ca (where there is a memorial built, at the Jack Ranch Cafe)

  • 3 days ago
  • Views: 17
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• Spinning Lady

  • From: dni
  • Description:
  • 2 weeks ago
  • Views: 30
  • Not yet rated

• Disney's Mad Tea Party

  • From: mpagano
  • Description:

    Our kids enjoying Disney World's Mad Tea Party. They usually don't agree on entertainment, but it's clear that they both had a great time here! Just note that if you take a photo like this, you will get VERY dizzy...it's tough staring through a viewfinder while spinning in circles.

  • 2 months ago
  • Views: 91

• Tibetan Woman on a Walk

  • From: yadang
  • Description:

    McCleod Ganj, a small town in mountainous northern India, is the idyllic location to sit back and watch the world pass by at a much slower pace.  The views are wonderful, the cafes are quaint, and the history is fascinating.  It is here where the exiled Dalai Lama came to reside, and this woman is one of the throngs that take a daily prayer walk, spinning prayer wheels that contain hundreds of handwritten prayers.

  • 4 months ago
  • Views: 109

• Whirling Dervish

  • From: uniquetouch22
  • Description:

    This is a photo of a a Sufi dancers, who are also known as "whirling dervishes" taken at the el-Ghuri complex near Khan il-Khalili in Cario. They are part of an Islamic sect that get closer to Allah by spinning in a circle to achieve a trance like state. The building its held is an old caravan stop and the dancers and live music is wonderful! This was our first trip to Egypt and it was fantastic!! I had always wanted to see Sufi dancers in person- so amazing!

  • 7 months ago
  • Views: 196

• Pet-friendly Onanock: Meet Chu

  • From: BurnhamInk
  • Description:

    The Spinning Wheel B&B is one of two pet-friendly B&Bs in Onancock. Here's Chudleigh, who will greets your canine with treats and a dog bed. He only has three legs, but he doesn't know it! The Colonial Manor Inn also welcomes your furry friends!

  • 9 months ago
  • Views: 299
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• ALLEGHENY PASSAGE AND C&O CANA

  • From: Jerry Dusterhoff
  • Description:

    If you are going to be in the vicinity of Brunswick, MD on April 14, 2009, stop by the library at 7pm.  They are hosting a Meet The Author evening and Jerry will discuss his book, cycling in general, and this ride in particular

    THE ALLEGHENY PASSAGE AND C&O CANAL

     

    SUNDAY       

    MCKEESPORT TO CONNELLSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA

     

    Ever since my first rail-trail experience, The John Wayne Trail in Washington State, I have wanted to do another.  I thought the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota would be it, but events conspired to keep kicking it back down the list.

    Originally seven cyclists and four non-cycling spouses were to make the journey, but events conspired to reduce the number.  My friend Byran and his wife Ilene flew in to Pittsburg and Cyndee and her husband Eliott would meet us a few days later.  Marilane and I drove.

    Before loading his Bike Friday (which fits into a suitcase for air travel) into the car, Byran took it for a spin around the parking lot.  Byran also took a head-over-tin-cups spin when it came apart.  Byran then tightened ALL of the bolts.

    The “plan” called for the cyclists to warm up by cycling to the trail head.  One look at the road and traffic changed that to Marilane driving us there.  Unfortunately, only three people and two bikes could fit into our Tribute, so Ilene had to see Byran off from the motel rather than accompany us to the trail. 

    The directions were very clear; just the streets of McKeesport were not cooperative.  Eventually, we located what appeared to be the starting place and prepared to depart.  Our guardian angel sent a friendly cyclist who turned us 180 degrees from our intended departure direction and provided more details.  Marilane waved us on our way, both she and us hiding the trepidation we felt at this extremely inauspicious beginning.

    We needed additional help a few miles further and again friendly folks went out of their way to be sure we got on the trail.  Finally, a real trail we could follow!  We are not inexperienced riders.  Only one or two appropriately placed signs would have eased our difficulties.

    Now that I have done it, my recommendation is to start in Boston, Pennsylvania and avoid the traffic and trail-finding hassles associated with McKeesport.  Once on the trail in Boston, I don’t believe I changed gears the rest of the day, until getting off the trail.  The smooth dirt or crushed stone trail tilted slightly uphill and the tall trees formed a high ceiling canopy about 90% of the whole ride.  The negative feelings at the beginning of the adventure slipped away, to be replaced by the quiet serenity that is part and parcel of riding rail trails.

    We stopped a few times, including for ice cream where the trail crossed a road, and Byran engaged folks in conversation.  Sunday, and lots of people were cycling.  Okay, if I said twenty, that might be an exaggeration.  Monday through Friday we had the trail mostly to ourselves.

    At the end of the trail in Connellsville, I again became directionally challenged and added another mile before reversing course.  Western Pennsylvania and Maryland have mountains.  The trail may be flat but once you get off it, the road leads UP!  We climbed a little over a mile, but finally breezed into the motel parking lot, only a couple hours later than expected.

    Byran had it at 50 miles.  I showed 46.8.  The whole trip he clocked more miles, but he recorded his mileage and I didn’t, thus we are using his numbers. 

    I reasoned that using B&Bs Monday through Thursday, with breakfast included, eliminated the hunt for morning sustenance.  Now having completed the trip, I am more ambivalent, and will no longer make finding breakfast a criteria for choosing lodging.  Connellsville has one motel and no B&B, so I had no option there, but the diner for breakfast was around the corner.  Likewise, it offered no tourist opportunities. 

     

    MONDAY     

    CONNELLSVILLE TO ROCKWOOD, PENNSYLVANIA

     

     The return trip to the trail took no time at all, being steeply downhill, and we resumed our journey.  The trail today proved slightly more steep, but still only one gear.  The grade and the surface combined to keep the cyclist pedaling, with no coasting possible.  Therefore, it provided a good workout.  We still had the treed canopy and solitude as we reeled our way up the trail.

    At a scenic overlook, Byran engaged in conversation with one of the few locals we encountered on the trail.  I don’t recall the last time I saw Byran out-talked, but this guy was non-stop.  Our five minute break lasted over twenty before we could pull ourselves away.

    Ohiopyle provided our lunch stop, at the Firefly Grill.  We sat outside and watched two men across the street cut up a large tree that had fallen in the courtyard of the Yough Plaza Hotel.  After lunch we cycled over to the falls, and then came back to the trail.  Byran stopped for two young ladies, to take their picture with their camera.

    We cycled through Meyersdale and Confluence (deriving the name from the coming together of the Youghiogheny and Casselman Rivers and Laurel Hill Creek) on our way to Rockwood.  Yes, George Washington slept here in Confluence.

    The trail is very nice and tranquil with the canopy; however my hope for spectacular scenery faded as the day progressed.  Fall color would be a much better time for pictures, what with all the trees.  One spot seemed promising and we stopped for a photo op. 

    Byran had it at 56 miles.  Marilane was waiting (and waiting and waiting) at the trailhead because the additional five miles to the B&B was UP, had some wicked turns and no shoulder and big trucks.  Having a support vehicle certainly alleviates problems associated with traveling through a place for the first time.

    Cyndee and Eliott arrived about 11pm.  Breakfast started at 7:30am the next morning.

     

    TUESDAY

    ROCKWOOD, PENNSYLVANIA TO CUMBERLAND, MARYLAND

     

    We got a late start, but eventually returned to the trail head and mounted up.  Cyndee missed cycling a full day of uphill, but we still had a few more hours of it before crossing the Eastern Divide.  Truthfully, I had been unaware of the Eastern Divide.  The sign indicated this watershed divided the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay.  We were happy to take a break in the short tunnel, as the morning mist had turned into a light rain. 

    After two and a half days of going up, it was now time to go down.  A short meteorological lesson: mountains oftentimes scrape the moisture out of clouds, leaving one side with much more rain than the other.  Such was the case today.  Once on the coastal side of the mountain, we encountered heavier rain.  Cyndee led us out and down, but Byran and I stopped for this and that and another picture, giving her a large lead.  At another tunnel she stopped to pour water out of her shoes as she waited for us. 

     

    We lunched in Frostburg, arriving a little after 1pm, as the rain ceased, and it crossed my mind that perhaps the restaurant would not even let our dripping bodies sit down.  Frostburg has some steep hills, but the one leading from the trail at least had a few switchbacks to get us up the steepest part.

    Finding a nice eating establishment, we contacted spouses so they could meet us there.  Cyndee opted to sag in with Eliott and therefore missed the best riding of the whole trip and the best views.  Frostburg to Cumberland is excellent, even with the now stopped rain wetting down the trail.  My only complaint is the views were behind us as we went down the trail, thus causing either a look over the shoulder or stopping completely to turn around and take a picture.

    Once again I became directionally challenged, and to make a long story short, it took about an hour to go the half mile from the trail to the B&B.  Byran had this at 50 miles. 

     

    WEDNESDAY

    CUMBERLAND TO HANCOCK, MARYLAND

     

    The sun came out and the temperature held in the mid-70s all day.  What a great day to cycle downhill with the wind at our backs!  Then reality set in.  The canopied trail protected us from sun and wind, and the downhill is really level until you get to the locks and a short drop.  While the Allegheny Passage follows a river on the old Western Maryland railroad, the C&O Canal follows the Potomac River, and was designed to be flat so the barges could be pulled by horses or mules.  Flat means a lot of indentations in the trail where recent rains could turn them into mud holes.  It rained a lot yesterday and there were a lot of mud holes to dodge when you could or get muddy when you couldn’t.  We got real muddy.

    Lunch was in Oldtown, Maryland in a now closed school that had converted the cafeteria into an eating establishment.  Thank goodness they still had plastic chairs for our muddy bodies.  The food was good and we chatted with a few locals as we leisurely lunched. 

    Once again Byran met up with a cyclist to chat and got out-talked!  But one of the many bits of information we learned was an asphalt trail paralleled the C&O for the last ten miles into Hancock.  That made cycling easier, and we dragged our bodies in arriving after 6pm, having clocked 64.5 miles on the odometer.

     

    THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2007

    HANCOCK TO SHEPHERDSTOWN

     

    If you look on the brochures of the C&O Canal, this exit is actually Sharpsburg, Maryland.  However, Sharpsburg has no place to stay, so you go across the river to Shepherdstown, West Virginia.  The Antietam Civil War battle took place near Sharpsburg and Eliott is a history buff, so he had it on his agenda.

    We had an excellent breakfast and departed later than anticipated, but only had to coast down the hill a short way to the trail.  Actually, we had another ten miles of asphalt to start our day.  Unfortunately, we thought the end of the asphalt had an access to the C&O Canal trail, but found out the hard way that the access was a mile back up the road.  It was marked, but all three of us didn’t read the whole sign, and the directions were at the bottom.  If I were doing the sign, I would start off at the top with an alert to turn.  But I’m not and we added a couple of miles to our route.

     

    When passing over a short bridge yesterday, my front wheel suddenly developed an annoying whine, a harmonic.  We thought it might be the hydraulic brakes, and did a little mechanical and it went away.  Today, the whine came back with a vengeance.  Since I am deaf in one ear it wasn’t so bad for me, but both Cyndee and Byran found ways to not ride within a 100 yards of me.  At a cemetery stop, Cyndee went on and Byran helped do major repair work, taking about a half an hour.  All to no avail.  Finally, when distant dogs started barking and howling when I went past, I decided to just take the front brake off.  We hardly needed brakes anyhow.  This procedure only took a few minutes and we bungied the apparatus to the front fork.  Within two pedal strokes, the sound was back!  Cyndee, being young and still having good hearing, put her ear to the spinning wheel and pronounced the sound came from the right side, not the brake side.  Byran poured some water on it and it stopped!  Back went the brake, and within a few minutes we were back riding in blissful silence.  Every couple of miles I dropped some water on the hub and after one large spray, the sound went away for good.  I hypothesize that some dirt got on the inside of the dropout and the water finally washed it loose.

    The Paw Paw Tunnel provided a change of pace to our riding.  The tunnel is 3,118 feet long, straight, and has no lights.  It took 14 years from proposal (which estimated two years) to completion.  There is a wooden guardrail to help keep you from falling into the canal, but once inside we only saw the light at the end, and could not see where to place our feet.  I hadn’t even noticed that Cyndee had a light on her bike.  About two-thirds of the way through, she asked if it helped as she aimed it in front of me.  I used the bike handlebars as feelers to bump into the wall or railing, and after several hard bumps, the light alleviated the walking.

    Today’s route also had a detour in it.  According to a downloaded map one of the cyclists had last night, you could take a short detour or a longer detour.  We wondered how we would recognize when we got to it, but the Parks Department made it easy, they put up a big barrier across the trail, advising it was closed to the public and giving a map of the detour.  It was about six miles and had lots of hills, some of which were steep.  I was tired and Byran was beat, so we know we squeezed every bit of energy she had out of Cyndee.  Steep hills are not in her repertoire.

    We ended up just short of 60 miles, 59.8 by Byran’s odometer.  Our stay was at the Thomas Shepherd Inn, and even though we had several recommended restaurants, dinner tonight was Beer, cupcakes, and apple dumplings, sitting on the Inn balcony.  We were really tired.  OK, the other guys went out to eat and brought me back a hamburger about an hour later.  But the cupcakes were supplied by Eliott, who had stopped in a bakery two days earlier.  They were supposed to be for last night, but nobody got around to them due to having to beat closing time at the restaurant in Hancock.  The cupcakes themselves were good, but the frosting was about two inches high and in the form of a beautiful rose.  Wonderful to look at and great to eat.  The apple dumplings were also supplied by Eliott, who had stopped at the Catholic Church fundraiser in Hancock.  They only do three batches a year, and he just happened into it on the first day.  These were also superior. 

     

    FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2007

    SHEPHERDSTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA TO LEESBURG, VIRGINIA

     

    Again, our riding was in Maryland, but the accommodations were across the Potomac River.  It came as no surprise that Cyndee opted out today.  Actually, it came as a surprise that she could drag her body down to breakfast.  I really feel bad that this route is turning out to be much more of a workout than I thought.

    Last night, Marilane had picked us up at trailhead and drove us UP to the B&B.  This morning, Byran and I coasted down at good speed, picked up the concrete, switchbacked ramp to the trail, and started our day.

    Cool, clear weather helped us move along at a fast pace.  A couple of riders exchanged pleasantries at Harper’s Ferry, and we passed them later on as one had had a flat tire.  Farther down the trail, they passed us back, since they were faster, plus we stopped for caves, turtles, etc.  We came up on them again and the older one called out.  Naturally, we stopped (I went a little ways down the trail, found a tree, then came back).  It seems the fruit we had seen on the trail were Paw Paws, something Byran had never tried.  He was given a quick lesson in what to do with them, and proceeded to peel and eat. 

    Our trail riding adventure included crossing the Potomac at White’s Ferry, the only remaining ferry in operation on the Potomac.  The cost is $1.00 for bicycles.  While waiting, Byran bought us some ice cream, at the cost of an arm and leg.  The picnic tables in the grassy waiting area are available for rent.  I am assuming for groups, but don’t know if those two lady proprietors would have charged us if we sat down on one.  Fortunately, the ferry arrived so we didn’t have to find out.

    Our speedy travel today, including the interminable stop for paw paws, put us across the river ahead of schedule, thus our ride was not there.  Marilane had her own travel problems in getting to Leesburg.  However, we rode about a mile up the road to an intersection and I called to see where she was.  It took a while, but soon enough she came into sight and we prepared to put the bikes into the Tribute.  Long story short, we ended up leaving the front wheel in the side yard, next to the street.

    After checking into the motel, I realized the wheel was missing.  We quickly off-loaded luggage, and before Byran could get back to the vehicle, Marilane and I had zoom-zoomed out of the driveway and headed back to the pick-up point.  Traffic was backed up somewhat, but we made the turn off and sped to the intersection.  Just as I skidded to stop, a construction worker had exited his truck and started to pick up the wheel.  Fifteen seconds later and I would have had a unicycle.  First the sunglasses, now the wheel.  I should have purchased a lotto ticket.

     

    SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2007

    LEESBURG, VIRGINIA TO WASHINGTON, D.C.

     

    Cyndee’s health convinced her that the better part of valor would be to skip the ride today. 

    Marilane and the loaded SUV came across on the ferry and she saw us off for the last ride of the adventure.  What she didn’t see was the three stops made before the first quarter mile.  Byran was in extreme dawdle mode.  It didn’t get any better, we stopped for everything. 

    Great Falls is a popular tourist spot, and quite crowded.  We took the obligatory pictures, then moved on a ways and had lunch.  The closer we came to D.C. the more folks we encountered.  We also switched off to an asphalt trail that was quite nice, except to get back on the C&O once into Georgetown, we climbed about 50 wooden steps.  Now that we know where it goes, those steps were really unnecessary.

     

    Just like the beginning in McKeesport, the end is not well marked.  We knew to look for Thompson’s Boat Center, just couldn’t find it.  I called Marilane from the Watergate Hotel and Kennedy Performing Arts Center and she directed me back a few blocks to the parking lot (which we had just ridden through, but on a different aisle).  The end of the ride.

    We all drove back to Frederick to my daughter and son-in-laws house, where he cooked fajitas and had the beer iced down.  My two sisters, niece, and grand-niece were in attendance.  I had a beer or three to help ease the pain.  I was clueless even as they sat me down inside that I was attending my surprise birthday party.  Since my birthday was still a few weeks away, it never crossed my mind.

     

    EPILOGUE

     

    I am formulating new rules for riding rail trails:

    1.         Suspension is the only way to go. 

    2.         The wider the tires, the better.

    3.         Unless you know the scenery is varied, no more than 4 riding days.

    4.         No more than 35 miles per day riding.  30 is preferable

    5.         Plan on end-of-ride vehicle support, whether you think it is needed or not.

    6.         Use a bike carrier for transporting bikes.

     

    This list may be expanded as I gain more experience.  Next up: Mickelson Trail in the Badlands of South Dakota.  It may not yet be a rule, but doing these in the fall, when the leaves are changing, seems to be a better time to go.

     

     

     

     

  • Blog post
  • 10 months ago
  • Views: 688

• The Day We Got To Be Birds

  • From: melissak
  • Description:

    Mount Vogel, Slovenia, July 9, 2008

    "The only thing you have to do is run. When I tell you, you must run as fast as you can--at least 15 or 20 kilometers per hour--and not stop until we are in the air."

    I rise on my toes in preparation, like a sprinter.

    The voice behind my ear yells "Now, run" and I try to push off. But my feet are being lifted slightly off the ground--the man strapped in behind me is taller than I am--and the great red sail above us is catching the air like a kite, trying to pull us backward. Against such resistance I can't get any purchase, and I have the feeling you get when you're trying to run in a dream and your legs are churning and churning but nothing happens.

    But the bulk behind me pushes me forward--all the while screaming at me to run, as I scream back "I'm trying!" And we scrabble closer to the edge of the mountain and then over and settle with a jolt into the seats of our harness, slowly sinking.

    "That was not good," he hisses. "Not fast enough. Very dangerous to take off that way."

    But then, a second later, the air fills out our sail and we move forward smoothly, with a sigh of relief.

    At that moment it really sinks in that I'm gliding high in the air over pine-covered foothills, with tall mountains and jewel-blue Lake Bohinj spread out below and in front of me. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and I'm not even frightened (the motion is too gentle for that), just utterly awestruck to be here. Ahead of me is another sail with Melissa and her pilot sitting underneath. I can't see her face, but I suspect it looks as amazed and delighted as mine.

     

    For days before we went paragliding, I'd look up at the mountains around our village and doubt whether I could actually jump off one. But when the time came, we had so much company at the takeoff spot that it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It was the first clear morning after days of rain, and (as we later learned) the best day for paragliding in months. So, as we rode a cable car and then a chairlift up Vogel mountain and trudged to the clearing for takeoff, we were joined by eight or nine other paragliders. Some had tandem passengers, like us, but most were individual fliers, there for the sport. Watching other people run off the mountain and go airborne ahead of us made it seem a lot less scary.

    After a minute or two of gliding, we turn and begin to climb, higher and higher in slow circles like a bird. The air grows colder; my fingers start to freeze, and I wish I'd worn thicker socks on my dangling ankles. The mountain with its cable-car station dwindles away below us. The altimeter behind me beeps incessently, the tones coming closer together as we rise. My pilot calls out the altitide: 2,600 meters; 2,800; 2,900 (nearly 9,000 feet). Across the lake I have a clear view of the Julian Alps, including their crown: Mount Triglav, the highest point in Slovenia. At 2,864 meters, it's now lower than we are.

    From here, my pilot tells me, nodding directions, you can see Austria, Italy, Croatia, and the Adriatic Sea, as well as most of Slovenia. Now I finally start to feel frightened, because it seems like our two sails and four people are tiny specks of almost nothing, dangling by a few threads and a bit of cloth way up here all by ourselves. There's an awful lot of air up here and not much else. (I can't see any of the other gliders that took off before or after us, as they remain far below.)

    Having gone as high as paragliders can legally go in this area without hitting controlled airspace, we descend a little. The temperature, which had fallen to 6 degrees at our peak, warms up and I begin to feel my fingers again. But the fun isn't over yet.

    "You like adrenaline? Do you want to try some acrobatics?" my pilot asks. "Sure!" I call back to him. And next thing I know, the horizon is spinning and swerving, the lake seems to be above and the mountains below, and I have to close my eyes to keep from getting impossibly dizzy. After a few minutes of that my stomach is starting to protest, so we right ourselves again and circle in over the lake toward the big meadow at one end.

    It's so beautiful up here that I never want to land. But soon the voice over my shoulder tells me that we'll be touching down in 30 seconds. That's hard to believe; we still seem pretty high. But the ground approaches quickly, and in a moment my pilot is telling me to stand up in the harness. I brace for a heavy impact but get only a light one. I stumble forward a few steps and fall to my knees, and we're back on terra firma. Wow! It feels like no time at all since we took off, but we actually flew for almost 40 minutes.

    I turn in time to see Melissa coming down a little ways away. And then we're unbuckled and sitting on a bench swapping stories of our flights while our pilots swiftly pack up the sails and harnesses into backpack-size bundles. From the efficiency of their motions, you can tell they've done this a few times.

    As we share a drink with them afterward, we discover several things. Our pilots---who call themselves the Loop Team---have been paragliding for 21 years. They've competed in flying events around Europe and abroad and even set a world record. So we were in safer hands than we'd realized. We also got incredibly lucky in our chosen day. Apparently, the conditions we had occur only a few times a year. And according to the pilots, we were the first passengers they'd taken as high as 2,900 meters. Even when the air conditions are right for that height, most people don't like going that far up and opt for a lower, smoother flight, they said.

    Back in town, I stop at the bankomat to get out cash to pay for our flights. Although we're usually as tight-fisted as a proverbial Scotsman when it comes to money these days, I don't bat an eye as I hand over 240 euros (half a week's budget). For the chance to be a bird, it was worth it.

    Incredibly, Melissa had her camera around her neck during her flight. She managed to take some wonderful pictures, despite freezing fingers and a fear of dropping her lens cap a few thousand meters into the lake. For a glimpse what we saw, click here and then click "paragliding."

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  • 1 year ago
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• Feast of San Giovanni, Firenze

  • From: hermitisland2006
  • Description:

    "Sir, are you aware that June 24th is a holiday?"  

    "For all of Italy?" I asked.

     "No, just in Firenze.  All of our car rental offices are closed except for one.  You'll need to change your pick-up location and get your car before 12 noon, when they close".

    
    The week before our family departed the states, I was calling to confirm our reservation for a rental car for part of our two week vacation in Italy.  Six months before, when making the initial reservation, there was no mention of a holiday on June 24th - the Festa di San Giovanni (Feast of St. John the Baptist) and the day of the Calcio Fiorentino (Ancient Football Match) was not mentioned as a day  when most of the city closes early.  Not knowing all about Firenze does not surprise me.  I believe in minimal research, only doing a little more than making arrangements for travel and shelter.  One needs to leave room for serendipity.  Our days’ explorations were determined after consulting the cinnamon swirls of foam on the morning's second cup of cappuccino, and checking to see if the sky was blue.

    
    We had just finished our last breakfast of breadsticks, cheese and figs in our apartment overlooking the Piazza Del Signora, a meal we had purchased the day before at the Mercato di San Ambrogio food market, near the Basilica Santa Croce.  We did not linger as we returned home from the market.  The Piazza Santa Croce was ringed with temporary metal stadium seating, and the pavement was covered with a foot of sand, but I didn't put two and two together, since I saw no posters proclaimed an upcoming event. Today was our last day in Firenze.  The apartment rental agent had agreed to meet us at 8:00AM, fortunately she was fashionably more than an hour late, as she was when we first arrived.  One of our children had gone down to the piazza for a cappuccino, but had hurried back, breathlessly announcing after running three flights of stairs that a parade was marching into the piazza.  "They are all dressed in Renaissance costumes, carrying drums and flags emblazoned with the Florentine fleur-de-lis!” A few moments later we heard for ourselves the clamoring of drums and boots against the pavement.  We watched for a minute from our window as two contrade of wonderfully costumed Florentine flag twirlers, drummers and guards streamed into the piazza.  The Santa Maria Novella contrade wore red and white renaissance costumes; the other contrade from Santa Croce wore blue and white.  Each team carried the other’s flag into the piazza. We grabbed our cameras and raced downstairs, afraid we were going to miss something.  About 150 men of all ages, fathers who were sharing the traditions with their sons, and royally clad dignitaries, assembled only yards away from the spot where the radical Dominican priest Girolemo Savonarola was burned at the stake in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1498 for his preaching.  (Ironically, this was the same spot where he himself had set fire to priceless art and irreplaceable books a year earlier, which became known as the Bonfire of the Vanities.)  After an opening speech, the dignitaries were led through the open doors of the Palazzo Vecchio, and their accompanying guards were posted. 

    The drummers sharply rolled out their beat and the two competing contrade divided into smaller groups for the first of many colorful, synchronized flag twirling demonstrations. They started their maneuvers slowly, first just spinning the flags by their sides and low above their heads.  As the tempo of the drums increased so did the speed of the performance; twirlers raced about the piazza, throwing and catching each other’s flags in unison. The flags were tossed ever higher into the sky as the drummers increased their frenzy.  Beads of sweat built on the performers’ faces, each hard in concentration; no one wanted to disgrace their team by dropping a flag.  The performance ended as the teams formed concentric circles, and tossed the flags to the highest point yet, the fleur-de-lis blazed a crimson red against the sun before falling into the hands that waited.  Twirlers gracefully dropped to one knee as they caught their flags.  Not one missed a beat; no flags were soiled by touching the stone pavement. The contrade reassembled to the vibrant applause from the surprisingly small crowd that had gathered to enjoy this colorful spectacle.  Slowly the contrade marched out of the piazza carrying their own team’s flags, as they have for centuries, under the watchful gazes of ancient statues. Neptune rising from the sea, sculpted by Ammanati, a full size copy of Michelangelo's David, Baccio Bandelli's Heracles.  And most representative of the Calcio Fiorentino tournament that was played later that day in front of the Basilica Santa Croce, Cellini's bronze statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa. 

    Calcio Fiorentino originated 500 years ago in Renaissance Italy.  It was originally a sport like rugby combined with boxing (more like limited warfare) for aristocrats.  Their number weakened by too many fatal injuries, the game was opened to citizens of Firenze.  Four contrade of 27 players each represented the four Florentine districts that existed at the time: Santa Croce/azzurri, Santa Maria Novella/rossi, Santo Spirito/bianchi and San Giovanni/verdi were created. Similar to the Roman game of harpastum, players were allowed to use their hands and feet to score a goal by passing over the end zone which ran the entire width of the field.  After a 200 year suspension, the games were revived in the 1930's and new rules that allowed choking, elbowing, head-butting and punching were written. Punches and kicks to the head, as well as sharp objects, were forbidden, fortunately.  These new rules must have coincided with advances in emergency medical care. The competing two teams are loosely supervised by eight field referees who certainly must fear for their lives.  With no time-outs allowed, the matches run for 50 minutes straight.  Three games a year are played in late June by the orginal four contrade to coincide with the Festa di San Giovanni.

    Donatella, our landlady, now waited for us when we returned to the apartment.  We explained our absence to watch the contrade flag twirlers, and she informed us that June 24th is a huge holiday in Firenze.  The early morning flag twirling was just the opening ceremony for the final match of this year’s Calcio Fiorentino.  "It's a rough, bloody game, many old grudges are settled today, but afterward all is forgiven and forgotten till next year". Later in the day, at 5:00PM, the four contrade in renaissance wardrobe would march gain from the Battistero di San Giovanni in front of the Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore through the streets of Firenze to the stadium in front of the Basilica Santa Croce as they have for centuries, their supporters cheering them on as they strutted.  The contrade from Santa Croce and Santa Maria were this year's play-off contenders.  The winning contrade would receive hundreds of pounds of steak, the equivalent of the weight of a white steer that was paraded onto the field before the contenders at the start of the game, and of course, bragging rights for a year.  A robust fireworks display would then be launched from the heights of the Piazzale Michelangelo which overlooks the city and the Arno River.

    We were really tempted to stay, watch the game and enjoy the fireworks, but the Amalfi coast waited ahead.  Leaving our apartment, we assembled our tribe in the piazza and slowly we marched, in single file, dragging our bags along the ancient bumpy streets, away from a wonderful week in Firenze, and on to the next adventure.  To read that, you’ll have to find my wife’s blog!

    For photos of the actual match, and to see the players and EMT's in action, use this link to the Calcio Storico Fiorentino homepage http://www.calciostorico.it/news/csf06_layhome_01.php?id_cat=4

    I wish we had stayed!

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 1590

• Flag Twirlers at the festival

  • From: hermitisland2006
  • Description:
    Flag Twirlers at the festival of San Giovanni in Forence, Italy. About 150 men, young and old, fathers with sons (teaching them traditions) and royally clad dignitaries assembled only yards away from the spot where the radical Dominican Monk Girolemo Savonarola was burned at the stake in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1498 for his preachings, the same spot where he set afire a pyre of priceless art and books a year earlier, the Bonfire of the Vanities. After an opening speech the dignitaries were led into the open doors of the Palazzo Vecchio and their accompaning guards posted. The drummers sharply rolled out their beat and the two competing contrade divided into smaller groups for the first of many colorful, synchronized flag twirling demonstrations. They started their maneuvers slowly, first just spinning the flags by their sides and low above their heads. As the tempo of the drummers increased so did the speed of the performance, twirlers were now racing about the piazza, throwing and catching each others flags in unison.
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 512

• SB08: Adriatic Adventure ... o

  • From: kristenkay28
  • Description:

    When I was in junior high and high school reading about massacres in Kosovo or the bombing of Sarajevo, it seemed inconceivable that soon I would be bumming around the former Yugoslavia myself.
    
    Bum seems to be the operative word, too. Several times I was mistaken for a homeless person, usually in conjunction with spending the night in such lovely places as the benches in front of the Ljubljana train station or the floor of the Bucharest Banasa Airport. Another night, we stayed in a prison. It was a significant step up from the train station the night before.

    Ljubljana, Slovenia was a gem of a city, gleaming and like Amsterdam without all the tourists, with mountains instead of marijuana. We took the train there from Venice, thinking the train would leave at 2 am and arrive at 7, but instead it left at 10 pm and arrived at 2 am. We tried to find lodgings but soon gave up and settled into park benches, then later found the one non-locked place in the train station was the baggage room. Some Slovenian guys joined us almost immediately, though, and snored loudly. They were kind of my heroes for being able to sleep so hard despite it being 5 degrees C and the floor of a train baggage room.
    
    A couple days later, we took a train from Ljubljana to Zagreb, Croatia, where we had a sunset picnic in the park across from the train station. Among the tulips, we dined on fruit salad and a traditional Slovenian bread, which happens to be just like Romania's special bread. Then, on to Bosnia via overnight train. Being impoverished PCVs, we did not get the sleeper compartment and instead contorted in our seats all night, or in Matt's case, the floor. At least by 10 pm, we had driven off the other two people in the compartment.
    
    We arrived in Sarajevo shortly after sunrise. A man from the hostel was waiting with a car should guests happen to arrive. He delivered us to the hostel headquarters, where we were served strong Bosnian coffee in little metal cups and then drove us up the hill — so steep the tires were spinning — to where we would be staying. Our rooms overlooked the city from the Muslim section of town. Just below us was a cemetery entirely of Muslim Bosnian soldiers killed during the siege of 1992-95. Some of the graves were newly dug so not sure where those soldiers had been buried before.
    
    While the city woke up, we oriented ourselves and found breakfast. Matt got some bad ideas in Sarajevo, proclaiming, "You shall be my harem. Molly is my first wife, but if she displeases me, Kristen shall take her position. Tatiana, you're No. 3. Now I need a dagger to protect the honor of my women." Matt said he was intimidated about traveling with three women and, indeed, we did give him a time of it. For example, Tatiana and I wrote and performed 2 songs for Matt, "Matt, You Got It Going On" and "If You Want Me To, Matt." Matt decided to respond with poetry, a series of laments told by the perspective of men in my life. He's not so witty as we are, though, so only managed one. In it, my ex in Kodiak thinks of me as a "bear of a woman" whom he must appease with fresh meat.
    
    We took a tour with some Canadians to learn about the civil war. Our Bosnian guide took us past the Holiday Inn that housed the journalists during the war and along the front lines of the conflict. Many buildings are still riddled with holes from the violence. Then we went into the hills above the city to the Serbian canton. We started at a museum. It is a family home that marked the end of the trenches and the head of the tunnel soldiers dug under the UN-controlled/ Serbian-sniped airport to bring food and weapons into Sarajevo held under siege.
    
    The tunnels were fine if you're my height and don't mind 25 km of wet feet as the tunnel flooded constantly. Matt had to crouch over the whole time. We also tested out one of the women-size packs, 28 km, or half the weight of the men's. I managed to get it just off the ground. Matt could get it on but hardly walk. Of course we didn't have the added motivation of our family starving to death if we didn't get the pack through the tunnel. We also watched video of the Serbian army shelling the city, shooting mortars at anything moving. We watched the library with its 500-year-old collection of books burn. It's still in ruins.
    
    We asked the director of the museum how the war is taught in schools and he said, "Depending on who you ask, you get three different histories, so childen learn in school history to 1992. At home, they learn how to hate." He said kids are separated at schools, much like Romanians and Hungarians in Balan. And yes, they do sneer at each other in Romanian, too. Yay, the Balkans.
    
    We next went into the mountains to sites from the 1984 Olympics. Climbing on the bobsled course, or what's left of it after the mountain was occupied by the Serbs, we had a beautiful overview of the city. Our guide, Mustafa, said it's hard giving these tours as it means constantly reliving the war years. "It's hard for you to imagine what it was like. It was Hell." He pointed out the new cemeteries that sprang up as a result of the war. Mustafa is bitter about how long the world waited to help the city. Once NATO stepped in, the years-old siege ended in a week. Meanwhile, 11,000 people had died.
    
    Having just been at the Legion Bridge where the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was shot setting of WWI, we had the geopolitical ramifications of involvement in Balkan conflicts on our minds but bit our tongues instead of bringing up the possibility of Russia taking up for the Serbs, etc. On the other hand, none of that happened so it seems like way too much prevaricating when people were dying.
    
    We were going to go up farther but had to turn around because of landmines. That was a first for us, having to worry about landmines. Instead we turned back around for dinner with the Calgarians. It was billed as a traditional Bosnian dish, so we had to laugh when it turned out to be sarmale, Romania's national dish, too. And Greece's and Turkey's and probably the rest of the Balkan's, too.
    
    By sunset, as the Muslim call to prayer sounded, we tucked in for the night as we were getting up at 5 for the next leg of the journey. We caught the bus to Dubrovnik, Croatia. The first half was lovely. The Bosnian mountains are incredible. Lush and cut through by a cloudy blue-green river. There a mosque, there a Catholic church, there an Orthodox chapel.
    
    After Mostar, the scenery was significantly less lush. Assorted olive trees were about all that grew on the sunbaked, rocky landscape. We crossed into Croatia again and eventually arrived in Dubrovnik. This coastal city is famous for its Old Town. The place reminded me a lot of Malta, and sure enough, I saw a Maltese cross on one of the churches.
    
    We stayed within the fortified walls, near the medieval fountain from which we got our drinking water. We ate seafood and wandered the labrynth that was the city's streets. After Turkish … no wait, Bosnian … no, wait, Croatia coffee (it's all the same) and hot chocolate, we went to a candlelight quartet concert in the chapel of an ancient monestary. We were in the front row, so close that we could read the music over the shoulder of the cellist.
    
    The next day, I sat at the fountain working on my travel journal and watching the cruise ship tourists get orientated. It was so the inverse of how we were traveling that it was funny to watch. Then we all went off to nearby Lokrum Island. We climbed up to the hilltop fort and than swam, first in the Adriatic and then in a saltwater lake. The island was swarming with peacocks, and it was interesting to hear their screams. Matt and I were sharing the fantastic book "Balkan Ghosts" by Robert Kaplan. He read aloud to Molly and I while we lolled on the docks in the soft evening sun.
    
    The next day, we headed to Split, Croatia. To get there, we had to go through Bosnia. It was a lot of passport checking. For some reason, the trip took an extra hour and a half. We picked up a lot of people along the roadside, to the point that there weren't enough seats. So pretty much we could have been in Romania had the road been less windy and the bus in worse condition. Maybe a few chickens.
    
    The main attraction in Split is the Dioclecian palace. The son of Croatian slaves, he went on to become a Roman emperor. He persecuted Christians so they turned his mosoleum into a church. His palace is now the Old Town as it's so huge.
    
    We sailed that night with the ferry to Ancona, Italy. We were among the first aboard so found seats. Ah, living the high life. By 5, some Italians had roused and were making a dreadful din.
    
    From Ancona, we took a train and then another to Venice. We had about 3 hours to see Venice. Since we ended up lost at first, we had about enough time to hurridly weave our way through the maze that is Venice's streets, snap a picture in San Marco Square and then rush back.
    
    We prayed for some sort of plane malfunction to delay for however long possible are departure from Italy, or more to the point, to delay our return to Romania and our jobs. Matt remarked that it hit him on the plane how fundamentally, soul-deep wrong it felt to go back. Our vacation just ended far too soon, and we were in no way ready to get back to work or to leave behind the marvels of modern plumbing and civilized interaction.
    
    We got back and had to hang at the tiny airport waiting for 5 hours before it was about time to catch our train from Gara de Nord. Romanians would stand over us sprawled on the floor and make disparaging remarks. If there had actually been seats available, we would have been in them, but no, all 25 were taken. Also in the airport, a stray, crippled dog wandered in, sniffed Matt and curled up at his head. Matt slept through it, though.

    It seemed fitting that we would end as we had begun: roughing it.

     

     

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 564

• Belize Fire Spinners

  • From: dtf110
  • Description:
    Fire spinners/dancers in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize. Performers: Laura Goldman and Paul (Fire Flies - Ambergris Caye, Belize)
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 711

• Belize - An Un-Belize-Able Vac

  • From: oldfashiongirl
  • Description:

    In February of this year, in order to escape the notoriously wet and cold winter of Oregon, my husband, Matt, and I traveled to the wonderfully warm and exotic country of Belize. We expected a tropical beach vacation - what we didn't expect was how welcome the people of Belize would make us feel and the lessons they taught us about what it takes to be truly happy in life.

    
    

    Day 1 & 2 - Welcome to Belize!

    It didn’t take two entire days to get to Belize, but it sure felt like it did! Our flight from Portland didn’t leave until midnight on Friday and we both worked that day, so by the time we got to Belize at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, we were exhausted. The Belize City airport is very small and it took us about an hour to get through customs. We have found that these small airports, such as the one in Ixtapa, Mexico, seem to schedule all of the arriving flights at the same time each day, presumably so that customs only has to be open for a few hours. After clearing customs, we took a taxi to the marine terminal, listening to the radio along the way about all of the violence and murders that had happened in Belize City the day before due to some elections that had taken place. We were very glad that we were not staying in the city and what we saw of it seemed very impoverished with not much to do anyway.

    The loading area of the marine terminal was very hot and crowded with everyone shoving to get on the boat when it finally arrived. They loaded all of the luggage into the hull of the boat and then everyone piled on. It was just an old speedboat – no life jackets or safety speech of any kind. A little different from back home where even a dinner cruise on the Portland Spirit requires a safety debrief. It took about 45 minutes of high-speed boating to get to the island of Caye Caulker, jetting by many little uninhabited islands surrounded by the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean.

    By the time we arrived on the island, I was sporting a major wind-blown look. We stayed at one of the larger hotels on the island (Seaside Cabanas - about 15 rooms), which also has the only pool. We had our own little cabana room with a stairway leading up to the rooftop terrace overlooking the ocean, complete with shaded hammock. After checking in, we went next door to the Sand Box restaurant and had a late lunch/early dinner of two rum drinks, some conch cakes, a burger and fish burger all for about $20 USD including tax and tip! We took a quick swim in the pool and were in bed by 6 p.m.

     

    Day 3 - Sunburn Death March from Hell

    Since we went to bed so early the night before, we woke up at 7 a.m. well rested and ready to explore the island. Caye Caulker is a very small island quite a few miles off of the main coast of Belize. The beaches are bright white sand made of tiny crushed shells and there are no cars on the island, only golf carts zooming around to carry the lazier tourists. Many dogs inhabit the island, some that are strays, some not. I guess if there is any place that it would be safe to let your dog run wild, it would be a small island with no cars. The water is a gorgeous turquoise and you can see the fish and stingrays swimming around when you walk out onto one of the many docks.

    We had a Belizean breakfast at the Sand Box of eggs, sausage and fry jacks with black beans.  Fry jacks are delicious, although eating beans at breakfast takes some getting used to.  After breakfast we decided to walk the circumference of the island, starting from our hotel and heading south. I could have sworn that I read in a guidebook that it only takes about 20 minutes to walk the island, but that turned out to be very wrong. We leisurely walked along the beach, past many small inns and beach cottages, and started venturing into a more unpopulated part of the island through some lightly forested areas. After an hour, we started to wonder just how big the island was. We should have paid attention to the fact that we were passing very few people. Unfortunately, we were at a point in the trail where we could either turn around and go back the way we came, or keep going forward. Not knowing how much longer we had to go, we chose to keep going forward.

    About two hours after beginning our “short” walk, we finally arrived at the opposite end of the airstrip running the width of the island that we had passed at least an hour prior. We walked down the airstrip to get back to where we had started and had to jump off into a marshy area to let a plane take off. When it went by, we could see the looks on the passengers’ faces wondering what the heck we were doing on the runway. By the time we got back to the hotel, our feet were killing us (I was wearing my pool-side flip flops) and we were both really sunburned. We hadn’t put on any sunscreen because we didn’t think we would be out that long. We cooled our poor feet and bodies in the pool for the rest of the day until a quick storm blew in during the evening.

    
    

    Day 4 – Going Slower

    All over the island, there are signs that say “Caye Caulker – Go Slow”. It’s kind of the island’s unofficial (or perhaps official?) motto. So, after our bruising day yesterday, we decided to take that advice. After breakfast, we tried snorkeling for the first time at the northern point of the island that has a shallow area said to be good for inexperienced snorkelers. We did see a few tropical fish, but unfortunately there was a large seawall in the area that we kept bumping into due to the waves and rebar buried in the sand that easily cut your skin. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t go on a professionally arranged tour while we were there as Belize is one of the top snorkeling destinations in the world. The tour we wanted was not running while we were there, plus we were both a little nervous about sitting in a boat in the open water with our existing sun burns.

    We headed back to the hotel to clean up for lunch and I noticed a strange rash breaking out on my arms. With our sunburned bodies, Matt’s cuts from snorkeling and my rash, we were a sorry looking couple. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Matt hurt his foot during our walk the day before which was causing him to limp around in pain. We had lunch at a small place called Rasta Pasta Rainforest Café that served the largest tostadas we had ever seen. We talked to the owner for a bit who happened to be from Eugene, Oregon.  Isn’t it funny how, no matter how far you travel from home, you almost always meet someone who lives virtually next door to you?

    We relaxed for most of the afternoon reading in the hammocks and decided to have our last dinner on Caye Caulker at the upscale restaurant Habaneros. I had shrimp and fish skewers over a bed of rice with peanut sauce, Matt had seafood ravioli, and we shared a pitcher of sangria.  The tables are on a wrap-around porch set above the street, which makes for some of the best people watching on the island.  After dinner, we walked to the island’s main dock, listened to the waves and looked up at the millions of shining stars.  We couldn’t have felt farther from home on this small island in the Caribbean.

    
    

    Day 5 – Into the Jungle

    We took the 10 a.m. water taxi back to the mainland where a driver was waiting for us from the eco-lodge we were staying at: duPlooy’s Jungle Lodge. The lodge is located on the other side of the country from Belize City, almost on the border of Guatemala. It was a long two-hour drive to get there, but along the way we stopped at the Belize Zoo, which features the native birds and animals of Belize, including some beautiful jaguars. Our driver gave us a personal tour of the zoo. He was full of information and quite helpful as well. For example, when the Tapir began spinning around in his pen, our driver cautioned us to take a step back from the fence, as the big animal was about to spray. We were lucky; the French couple next to us were not.

    We arrived at duPlooy’s via a long dirt and gravel road winding through farmland and forest. The lodge is smack-dab in the middle of the jungle and is definitely the most remote place I have ever been in my life.  We checked into our room, which was very nice and spacious, with its own screened porch and hammock. Although there is no A/C at the lodge, at least you could flush toilet paper, unlike on Caye Caulker!

    After dropping off our luggage, we headed down to the bar, which is on a giant deck sitting on stilts overlooking the jungle connected to a wooden boardwalk high above the forest floor leading out to an overlook area with a view of the river and some hammocks. The overlook area is also home to some bats that make creepy noises above you when you are trying to read in the hammocks. We had a few drinks at the bar and then dinner at the onsite restaurant, which thankfully serves very good food. I was a little concerned with that since there is no option of going anywhere else to eat because you are so very far away from civilization.  However, every meal we had was very well done and you could tell that the breads and desserts were handmade that day. That night, we went back to our room and fell asleep to the noises of the jungle.

    
    

    Day 6 – Iguanas, Tarantulas, and Killer Bees, Oh My!

    This morning I awoke with a new ailment to add to our list – an eye nearly swollen shut. I’m not sure what caused it, but after I took some Benadryl it receded a bit. After breakfast, we met our guide for the day and headed off to the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich. To get there, we crossed the river via a small hand-cranked ferry.  Huge iguanas perched in the top of the nearby trees and every once in a while one would dive into the river below.

    We had a specialized guide for the ruins who was very knowledgeable about the Mayans and filled our heads with various facts and dates until they were about to explode. We had the site almost entirely to ourselves and the weather was just gorgeous. We climbed the largest ruin, although I chickened out about half way to the top and sent Matt up alone with my camera to take pictures. While Matt was exploring the ruins, the guide called me over to see a tarantula nest in the ground. He stuck a blade of grass into the hole in the ground and out came a huge tarantula! At about the same time, we heard a loud buzzing noise come toward us and pass above the trees somewhere. Our guide, looking nervous, informed me that it was a killer bee swarm, noting that there are traps around the area to catch and kill these bees. Now, I had read before our trip that both tarantulas and killer bees existed in Belize, but I didn’t think that I would come across them, on the same day at the same time no less.

    After leaving the ruins, we had a quick picnic lunch by the river and headed out to Barton Creek Cave. It took about an hour of driving down a very bumpy gravel and dirt road to get there, through lots of farmland and orange groves and even some Amish farmsteads. We passed some Amish on the road in their horse-drawn buggies and long beards in the hot and humid weather. We got to the cave and were again the only ones there. Belize has a large system of caves throughout the country that the Mayans used as burial sites and this particular cave is explored via canoe. We hopped into the canoe with our guide and paddled into the darkness, armed with headlamps and flashlights. We spotted some skeletal remains and pottery, as well as many bats and the expected stalactites and stalagmites. The trip through the cave was actually quite peaceful and not as creepy as it sounds, except for the times that we were squeezing through such tight spots that our canoe barely fit. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone with claustrophobia.

    On the way back to the lodge, we visited a butterfly house specializing in the breeding of the huge Blue Morpho butterfly. It was so much fun standing in the atrium while these magnificent butterflies flitted around and landed on you.

    That evening, we saw the kinkajous that come out at night to feed on fruit the bartender puts out for them on the deck. Kinkajous are a kind of half-monkey, half-cat type of creature that climbs around in the trees. Perhaps you heard the news reports a few years ago that Paris Hilton was bitten by her pet kinkajou. At the time I found this funny, but it is sad to think that she could own such a creature that really should be in the wild.

    
    

    Day 7 – Valentine’s Day in the Jungle

    We got up extra early for a birding walk and to try and catch a glimpse of the toucans that come out in the morning to feed on the fruit put out on the deck. Unfortunately, they stayed only briefly and flew away without eating the fruit. So, we went on the guided bird walk, along with three other couples that were much more experienced than us. It was a very educational experience and we saw a variety of birds, including some parrots. After the bird walk, we ate breakfast back at the restaurant. As we were eating, we noticed a commotion over on the deck. The toucans had come back for a late breakfast and were swarming the fruit. The best part was that we were the only ones around to see it and I could take as many pictures as I wanted without fighting with the other birders and angling for position.

    After the high-noon sun had receded a bit, we went for a walk in the +40-acre on-site botanical garden. There were some gorgeous plants, many that we have never even seen in the North West, and we saw a lot of birds as well. That evening, dinner was delicious as usual, and a little more special since it was Valentine’s Day. The kinkajous even came out again to say hello.

    
    

    Day 8 – Tikal & Guatemalan Spider Monkeys
    We drug ourselves out of bed at 5:30 a.m. for a daylong trip to the ruins of Tikal in Guatemala. Because the other guests from the lodge that were going to go on the excursion cancelled at the last minute, we had to go with another hotel’s group. A driver from the lodge took us down the long dirt and gravel road to the main highway and dumped us off to wait by the side of the road. He didn’t know who exactly was coming to get us, or even when, saying that we should just wait there and then he drove off. This was a little nerve racking as we were out in the middle of nowhere and it would have been a long walk back if no one showed up. But, a van did show up for us after only about 15 minutes and we were off to cross the boarder into Guatemala.

    There is a US travel advisory for citizens traveling into the country of Guatemala and my guidebook had a page-long warning about corrupt cops, banditos, and highway hijackings targeting tourists. The guidebook advised that if you are hijacked, it is best to just hand over your valuables or the situation could likely turn into murder. So, as a precaution, when we got to the border we transferred into another van, this one with a Guatemalan driver and license plates instead of Belize plates, which are targeted more often. After crossing through immigration at the border, the differences were like night and day. Although we thought that Belize was a fairly impoverished country, this was nothing compared to Guatemala. The main highway was a large dirt and gravel road, which eventually turned into a paved road that was almost worse as the potholes were so bad that the van had to slow down to a crawl to traverse them. We drove for hours past villages of shack houses and farm animals spilling out into the road, girls carrying water urns on their heads coming back from the local streams, and people basically going about their daily lives.

    After a few hours, we finally got to the entrance of Tikal and started our hike in. We were with our guide and a nice couple from Sacramento. Tikal is a huge ruin site in the middle of a jungle landscape. There were more tourists there than we had seen on our entire trip, but because the site is so large, we rarely felt crowded. The ruins were gorgeous and we both agreed that seeing them was worth the trip.

    

    
    

    Day 9 – Belize was Un-Belize-Able!
    It was time to start our long journey back home. We didn’t leave the lodge until 12:30 p.m., so we had time to have breakfast, lunch and pack. The trip home included the two-hour drive back to Belize City, a two-hour wait at the airport, a two-hour flight to Houston, a two-hour trip through lovely Houston customs, and then a five-hour flight back to Portland. It was a long day, made even longer due to the Houston airport being shut down because of a thunder/lightening storm that left us taxing on the runway for an extra hour.

    With the various physical ailments aside, our trip to Belize was absolutely fantastic and we would love to visit again some day. Most of the country’s residents did not have electricity or telephone service, but they were so friendly and engaging and seemed so genuinely happy that it made us question what truly makes us happy in our own lives.  I pondered how I would spend my time if I were to live in Belize, where there are no chain stores, traffic, or the endless quest for material items that seems to take up so much of our time and energy in the USA.

    As the saying goes (at least this was printed on various souvenir t-shirts) “Belize is un-Belize-able”! Matt has asked me to please stop saying this, as it is extremely annoying. So, in reply I say: “You better Belize it is!”

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• Vietnamese Face Massage

  • From: VJAnton
  • Description:

    It was supposed to be a hair washing. Really, that's all I thought I was getting. Sam said that it would take about 45 minutes and something about a head massage, but I had no idea what I was in for. I hadn't washed my hair in over a week so I was long overdue for some shampoo, and a dollar seemed like a very reasonable price to not have to do it myself.

    
    
    First, she started by pouring a handful of Head and shoulders onto my dry hair and working it into my scalp with the assistance of a few drops of water drizzled out of another shampoo bottle. Then I was instructed to lay down with my head in one of those hair washing sinks. There was a bed in front of the sink, a patent leather bed, so I laid down and she rinsed out the shampoo.
    
    
    Then she began to massage my temples and my eyes began to close. Soon enough she was scrubbing my nose with some minty scented exfoliant. The bed fell away beneath me and my body began to float. She began to grow fingers, a thousand of them to be precise. She was having a field day with my prominent chin, clapping her hands together as they connected at the end of my jaw line. She continued rubbing my face for half an eternity before she began working on my neck and shoulders. And when my time was up she lifted my head forcefully, throwing my noodly body off the end of the table and into a standing position, a white cotton turban atop my spinning head. Then she sat me down and continued to work on my shoulders and back. After 45 minutes she smiled and asked for money. I wanted to tip but all I had was 21,500 dong, about a dollar and twenty eight cents. She took it gleefully as all the other girls giggled at my loopy countenance.
    
    
    Now my hair smells nice and my face is aglow. I'll be sad to leave this strange, happy country.

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• Traditional Crafts in Rural In

  • From: sarah2357
  • Description:

    I had an interesting village crafts tour during my stay in Jodhpur, India. The tour was actually a last minute decision after my breakfast when I saw a flyer on the wall at the B&B I was staying at in Jodhpur. The tour consisted of my husband and I along with our guide, a bright young man, in his early twenties. I thought to myself I had nothing to lose; the cost of the tour was equivalent to $10, and I could escape the hustle and bustle of the crowded, loud city for a day.

    

    The tour included a taxi taking us to nearby rural villages, known as Bushnoi villages, outside of Jodhpur admist the desert-like terrain. Our first stop was visiting a traditional Bushnoi family in their home to see their way of life. We felt very honored to be guests in their home, and even participated in a offering ceremony. The home was mostly made up of clay and a roof that resemble thatched roofing. Open fire ovens were a centerpiece in the kitchen.

    

     

    The second stop on our village tour was the home of a potter. The potter's home was a delight in that I actually got to participate by making a pot. The potter's wheel was spun by a stick inserting into a grove that you could spin round and round until you built up enough momentum to start molding your clay. I was definately no expert, but it was fun trying!

    

    

    The third stop was at a dhurrie weaver's house and studio. This was truely amazing. I got a weaving 101 introduction from the brother of the family. The whole process of rugs is like magic...from collecting your fibers, to hand dying them from natural sources like plants, to spinning it into yarn and placing it in the loom. Talk about craftsmanship! Of course there are finished products you can purchase. Mine was a small bedside dhurrie which was conveniently folded up for me into the size of a book, fitting perfectly into my suitcase. What is even better is that the money goes towards sustaining the family business which preserves their way of life and culture

    

    

     

     

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• Hangin' in New Orleans Part I

  • From: TaurusMBA
  • Description:

    My birthday coincided with my niece's graduation from Penn tate. What better way to celebrate then to visit a city that neither of us has been to before?!?

     

     

    Wednesday 5/21

    Alex arrived at my house at 6:30 am , ready to go, but she still didn’t know where. I still wasn’t going to tell her. With the boarding passes printed out, and tucked away, my secret was still safe.

    We get to the airport, and I hand her the boarding pass, and she finally sees where se’s going. We have a fairly easy flight, and an easy taxi ride to the Hotel Monteleon. While I only picked this hotel because it had a funky bar in the lobby, it ended up being a landmark in the French Quarter. Royal Street is also touted as the nicest street in the quarter. Who knew?

    We drop our bags n the room, wash our hands and brush our teeth, and head around the corner for lunch. Felix’s Oyster bar was the first of many oyster tastings for me. We split the Oyster Sampler (1/2 Rockefeller and half some cheesy version), and each got a Po’boy Combo. Alex had the Crawfish (her 1 ^st ) with a cup of Gumbo, and I had Oyster with a cup of Etoufee.

    We headed back to the hotel for an afternoon swim. It was HOT, and we each had been up since 5am . The rooftop pool was very nice, but the pool water was a little too warm for my taste. I felt like they were making Gumbo out of me. But, since it was close to 90 degrees and very humid, it helped a little. The afternoon sun proved to be too strong, and we headed back to our room to watch Oprah. She had a show on people with OCD, and we watched a guy – in the name of therapy! – lick a toilet seat.

    I hopped in the shower, got dressed, and made reservations at the 3 Must-Go-To places on the list we compiled on our flight. It was tough to choose only 3. While Alex got ready, I slipped down to the lobby bar for an aperitif. I ordered a Sazerac, founded in the city 2 hundred years ago….it’s then I notice….the bar….it’s moving! Yes, the carousel bar actually spins!!!!

    I am sitting next to a gentlemen and find out his name is Robert. He’s from Georgia , and frequents the Crescent City , and only ever stays at The Hotel Monteleon. He asks where I plan to eat dinner, and it turn out Robert is a fellow foodie, in ton for the Louisiana Food and Wine Festival. I discussed my plans for Thursday and Friday dinner, as well as the Saturday brunch, and mention that we are just looking for a quick, easy, super casual dinner. Robert suggests Acme Oyster House, which is right around the corner and right across the street from Felix’s.

    We sidle up to the bar, since there were no tables left, and start out with two drafts of the local brew Abita Gator Ale. It’s yummy, reminds me of Magic Hat. We split their world famous char-gilled oysters, which come out bubbling hot. Then, Alex gets the Etouffee, and takes the bartenders advice and tops them with fried crawfish. I get the Acme sampler. It’s got a little beans and rice and jambalaya and gumbo and sausage. Even sitting at the bar, we both really enjoyed our dinner. We’ve only been here a few hours, but man, oh, man have we already eaten well!

    After finishing up our very yummy dinner, - and, oh, by the way, the jambalaya was my favorite thing in the sampler – Alex and I stroll up Bourbon Street a bit. Now, if I had been with my college friends, or if Alex had been with her college friends, we would have enjoyed it. But, I was with my niece, and she was with her aunt. So, all of the lewd and lascivious cat calls and approaches made each of us fell a little awkward. Thank goodness it was only about 8pm ! We headed back to our room for the night, and were each asleep by about 9:30 or 10. What a long day!
    Thursday May 22 ^nd

    We woke up early, and both were hungry. How is that possible???? So we head out, cause Aunt Andrea needs her coffee, and there is supposed to be some world famous coffee a few blocks away. We consult the map, and find our way very easily to Café du Monde, where they serve scrumptious café au lait and piping hot, fresh made beignets. Alex doesn’t drink coffee so she had an OJ. Party-pooper J It is a quick and super-cheap breakfast, (8 bucks for the both of us including tip!) and included a show by the trumpet and banjo player out front. As we stand to leave, we notice that we are basically covered in powdered sugar. Anyone who has been here is nodding and smiling. We head back to the hotel for showers and packing up for the day.

    After getting ourselves together, we decide to make today a low-key day, and just stroll around the French Quarter. We sent the next couple of hours ambling up and down the streets, ducking into alleys, and peaking into court yards. The number of art galleries is a little overwhelming, and I have such a strong desire to by one of the bold red ones, depicting flowers. It starts to rain, so we take shelter in a souvenir shop, where I buy some trinkets. The rain stops, and we continue our lazy journey. The rain starts again, and we seek cover in another little shop. I buy a few more trinkets.

    The rain stops again, and we both admit sheepishly, we are hungry for lunch. But! We decide that it has to include vegetables, and as many as possible. Nothing fried, and no rice or bread. We read a few menus posted outside the large selection of restaurants, and pass by many: gumbo, jambalaya, fried oysters, fried crawfish. All delicious, but all without sufficient water and nutrient content. We consult the Pat O’Brien’s menu, and they are serving shrimp roumelade on a bad of salad greens. Sold! We sit outside in their courtyard, since there is a break in the rain. I order a Bloody Mary and Alex orders an Electric Lemonade. We both admit that although this is where the Hurricane was created, neither of us are fans, and we are both perfectly content passing up the opportunity to order one here.

    I love that my Bloody Mary comes garnished with green beans and cucumber! The salads are good, too. It’s a nice lunch, and the menu’s tell the tail of Pat O’Brian’s history. It mentions that during the war, sugar to make traditional distilled beverages was scarce, but the means to make rum was plentiful. In order for barkeeps to obtain a bottle of scotch or whiskey or anything, they HAD to buy a case of rum. So, bartenders got creative in ways to push that product. During prohibition, if one wanted entrance into the place, the secret phrase was, “A storm’s a-brewing.”

    We make our way back to the hotel to rest and relax. We have 7:30 dinner reservations at Antoine’s, and I fear I may not have enough of an appetite. I change into sweats and head upstairs to the hotel’s gym. Maybe n hour on the treadmill followed by some weights will help me work up the ability to have another meal. After the workout, I get ready for dinner. I head to my favorite lobby bar while Alex gets ready. This place is always busy, and I am enjoying the people watching. When Alex joins me, she has a White Russian, and I have – of course – a Sidecar.

    We amble over to world-famous Antoine’s. Antoine’s has over a dozen dining rooms, and where you are seated is all part of a local caste system. Alex and I were seated in the very front room…meaning we were immediately pegged as tourists. The restaurant has more claims to fame then almost any other in the country. It is where Oysters Rockefeller were created. It is said that the sauce (“often imitated, never duplicated.”) that was made was so rich, it was named after a gentleman of equal wealth. Our waiter was also happy to share some additional information. According to him, no one knows the secret recipe except the head chef. He brings the ingredients into the restaurant in a large burlap sack, so people can not see what it is there. He then makes the sauce in a windowless room, behind closed doors. Fact or Fiction? We didn’t care, it was fun to hear. This was also the same waiter who, when describing the menu at the world-class restaurant stated that everything tastes better fried. In fact, if I may quote him, “Y’all could fry a tire, and I’d eat it.” This was not the type of thing Alex and I were expecting to come out of our tuxedoed waiter, but it was our favorite quote of the trip.

    Menu highlights: I ordered – can you guess? – Oysters! I then followed with Pompano Pontchartrain and Alex had the trout. If you want the famous Baked Alaska for dessert, you must order it at the beginning, which she did. We decided to share a bottle of Etoile Brut, and settled in for our lovely meal. As you can see, we ordered all the famous Antoine dishes, making this the perfect tourist stop for us. The Baked Alaska was the size of a basketball, and we were barely able to eat a third. The meal, though, was so leisurely, that b the time we were strolling home, it was definitely our bed time. The Carousel bar was hopping, but we had eaten and drunk enough for one day.

    Friday May 23 ^rd

    OK, OK, enough fooling around. Alex and I have some serious sight seeing to do in 2 days, and I spent my hours the evening before mapping out our packed itinerary for the next 48 hours. Serious sight seeing requires serious fuel, and where else to get this? Café du Monde, of course! Alex decides to try a café au lait, but warns me that the mix of caffeine from that, plus the sugar from the beignet may give her serious jitters.

    Have I taken the time to stop and mention how much fun we were having? It was so nice to spend time with my niece, the darling baby I used to race home from high school to play with. The little teenage girl I took to NY on her 13 ^th birthday. She and I hadn’t really spent anytime alone talking since that NY trip, and I was finding out that she has turned into a wonderful, witty, charming and sarcastic woman. I think she was having as much fun as I, too.

    After our flour+sugar+caffeine breakfast, we set out to catch the ferry across the Mighty Mississippi. Neither one of us was feeling 100%. Why? Because our waitress flat out refused to serve us only one order of beignets. One order equaled 1.5 beignets each the day before. There was no way we could eat 3 each. We ate 4 of the 6, and that extra ½ doughnut really pushed us over the edge. Good thing we had hours and hours of walking ahead of us. We caught the ferry to Algiers ’s Point, which is the oldest section of New Orleans , and the only one on the other side of the river. We were headed to Mardi Gras World, Blaine Kerns factory where most of the famous parade’s floats are made. The place additional serves as a Mardi Gras museum, and gives tours. The minibus was waiting for us at the base of the ferry, and our bus driver, Nate, or New Orleans Nate as his friends call him, was such a gracious welcomer.

    Mardi Gras World was a great stop. Kit was nice to hear about the history and tradition, as well as tour that facility. Oh, and we got to try that super-sweet creation: King Cake. (Just what we needed…more flour and sugar…) Neither of us had the piece with the baby. On the bus ride back to the ferry, Nate thanked and blessed us (this is the south) for our visit. “I know what it means, to miss New Orleans …” If anyone goes to NOLA, I highly recommend this stop. Not only was the tour worth it, Alex and I both commented that we felt proud to help continue this tradition, by our patronage.

    The entire event, from boarding ferry to landing again, with the tour in between took between 2 and 2.5 hours. On the ferry ride back, I consult the tour book on where to lunch. I had bought a few travel books, and today, I was carrying New Orleans for Dummies. The woman who wrote it was (and still is) a NOLA resident, and gave some really good insight. Her step by step instructions helped Alex and I find things like Mardi Gras World, etc. A gentleman named Jeff starts chatting with me and asks if that book was worth it. I told him I thought so. Alex and I are in the market for some good cheap eats, and the book says we can get that at Café Mespero, right there on Decatur Street .

    Have I mentioned how hot it is this week in the Crescent City ? I hate hot and humid, and it is hot and humid. 93? 95 degrees? And humid like I don’t know if I ever felt before. It is quite possible that this place is more humid than Tampa . Alex and I feel like bread pudding…hot, steamy, sticky. It’s grosser than gross. As we approach the line (which is ever present) at Café Mespero, we are in line right behind Jeff. He introduces us to his buddies Jeff and Tim. The 3 are in town to celebrate a buddy’s retirement from the service. We end up getting a table for 5. These gentlemen (all in their 50’s?) were nice and polite, and it seemed like a fun and spontaneous thing to do. When our beverages came, I made sure to toast them all, and thank all of them for their service to our country. They seemed pleased. We chatted about our vacations, and kids graduating from college (they had some). And, as we moved our discussions to the price of gasoline and the mortgage crisis, sandwiches the size of our heads were put on the table. Alex had a Muffaletta, (we are moving through the list!) and I had – seriously…do I even need to write this.. – an Oyster Po’Boy.

    We walk back to the hotel, and it is raining slightly. It is STILL 90-something degrees. We don our swimsuits and get into the pool. It helps a little, but would have been nicer f the pool water was cooler than 83 degrees. We don’t have too much time to swim because we have reservations at Restaurant August at 5:30 . 5:30 ? On a Friday? Yes, that is all they could squeeze us in for, and I suspect we were the lucky recipients of a late cancellation.

    And I do mean LUCKY. Those of you who know me know that I am a Foodie. In fact Food Geek would be a better term. John Besh is one of my crushes. Chefs are my superstars, and the James Beard awards are my Oscars. If we had bumped into Brad and/or Angelina on our trip, I would have casually walked by, and never even thought to or cared about snapping a photo. But, my stomach was all a-flutter at the thought of John actually being there that evening…or was he across the street at his new steak house in Harrah’s? Harrah’s is huge, as many casinos are. It skewed our map, and since we were walking to the restaurant from our hotel, we ended up walking passed it by 5 or 10 minutes. Going for an extra 15 minute walk isn’t too big of a deal…But need to reiterate that this was New Orleans, it was in the late afternoon, and Alex and I were dressed UP!. I thought my silk blouse was going to melt into my skin, and Alex worried her make-up would start to run down her face.

    We were greeted by wonderful staff, the lead being our waiter Carlos. He saw our flushed faces, and immediately brought over water. He then stood there, knowing we would gulp down that first glass so he could replenish it right away.

    As soon as I opened the menu, I knew exactly what I was getting. Having only been reviewing the menu for a minute, Alex was confused when I closed the menu with a definitive clap. But, when you are at one of your “destination” restaurants, and that award winning chef is offering a 5-course tasting menu, complemented by an optional wine pairing, why would I look any further?

    This part of the journal is devoted to the mal we had, so if you are not as much of a Food Geek as I (and, honestly…who is?) you may want to skip down a few paragraphs until you see the word “Harrah’s.”

    Those familiar with John Besh know that the foundation of his cooking is using local ingredients, and showcase Louisiana cooking at its freshest. It was a thrill to get to introduce that concept to Alexandra. We food geeks LOVE to drone on and on about this kind of stuff and we are always searching for new listeners, because we have a better chance of intriguing them, instead of boring them.

    Alex chose to start with a Chop Salad, which was a beautiful presentation of local vegetables, most of them in baby form, tossed with fresh herbs and a white wine vinaigrette. For her entrée, she chose Poulet Rouge, pan roasted and sitting atop ricotta gnocchi. Because she sometimes stops at 1 glass of wine, I chose a Riesling for her. I thought it would lend itself well to the salad, and that the crispness would cut through the richness of the gnocchi. She ended up having 2 glasses, but enjoyed them both with each course.

    But first, a server presented us with an amuse bouche…perhaps better called a “ Lagniappe ” since we were in New Orleans . It was a lovely chilled and silky seafood custard, served in an eggshell. My first course was a salad of spring vegetables, tossed with peas and lardoons, topped with parmesans crisps and a warm poached egg. The temperatures and ratios were perfect. I finished the whole thing before realizing that the portion was larger then your normal tasting menu size..uh-oh…don’t fill up on salad, there are 4 more courses! Alex couldn’t get over the fact that her simple looking salad was so delicious, and that is where we had our conversation on the perfection of simple, yet fresh ingredients.

    My 2 ^nd course was Frog legs. I had never had them, so why not, right? They were little fried frog leg balls, made into a miniature meatball, sitting atop some garlic custard. I enjoyed the presentation, which had the bare leg bone sticking out of the meatball, making it look like a fried frog leg lollypop. Alex thought it was a bit ostentatious. I love that she had such opinions!

    A sever then appeared behind me and quickly fashioned a dental bib around my neck. What the-? As she walked away, she said, “Trust me, you’ll be thankful for it.” The 3 ^rd course was good ole fashioned Louisiana Mud Bugs. They were sitting in a white wine broth, but it was still a big bowl of steamed crawfish. I have eaten them before, in the privacy of a friend’s home, on someone’s back porch, etc. But, this was a four-star restaurant. Surely they weren’t expecting me to dig in and channel Daryl Hannah’s scene with the lobster from Splash! I beckoned over our wonderful waiter, Carlos, and asked if he would give a tourist a lesson. He did so, and yep, I was expected to dig in, fingers, head-slurping and all. When in Rome ! They were yummy, and my only regret was that the restaurant was so elegant; I couldn’t slurp out the head as loudly and as enthusiastically as I had wanted.

    I was, mind you, the only person in the entire restaurant participating in this menu, and therefore, the only one wearing a bib! This fact amused Alex, and it was only after all traces of evidence were gone did I mention that she missed an excellent photo op to embarrass Aunt Andrea.

    My Main course was “Filet” and morels. The filet was constructed out of flank or skirt steak, tied up like a little mignon with a chive. It was served on creamy polenta. Another delicious course. Alex enjoyed hers as well, and we did share all tastes across the table…except for the frog legs. It was the only thing the whole trip she chose not to try. Since they tasted like a turkey meatball (sorry, just being honest) I told her she wasn’t missing anything.

    Dessert was coming with my order, so Alex and I decided to split it. Wise choice, as it was a full sized dessert of Chocolate mousse tart, with caramelized bananas and a shot glass banana milkshake. The highlight was, though, that it was served with a port. I have never had, and was eager to try. Carlos told me it was a 1986 vintage (as old as Alex!), and I enjoyed its complexity. The hints of aromas and flavors, chocolate? Blackberry jam? Licorice? played nicely on my tongue.

    Since we had passed the casino twice today (it is exactly between the ferry and Restaurant August), we paid a visit after dinner. We needed a large space to walk off dinner, but preferably an air-conditioned space. I put $40 in a slot, and we played around a bit. Losing more then half, we cashed out, and moved to a machine that she chose, one of the penny slots. Again, the money was dwindling. Slightly annoyed, she handed me back the voucher with $9. I stuck in Lucky Sevens, and when we were down to our last 2 bucks, we saw 7-7-7 ! I won $36, and told her that this is always when Aunt Andrea cashes out. The voucher read $38.31. We had spent well over an hour here, and even got to see some good live music. An excellent value for $1.69!

    We made our way back to the hotel, and decided to finish off our night in our usual manner, with drinks at our favorite spinning bar. I stuck with my Side Car, and Alex opted for a New Orleans Sunset. Not sure what is in it, but she can tell you, since she snuck the drink menu in her purse as a souvenir J

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• Zipline Canopy Tour in Costa R

  • From: Macinfla
  • Description:

    We’re not exactly adventure travelers , but while vacationing in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica we quickly decided that we wanted to try a zipline tour of the rain forest. There are many to choose from in this area and after reviewing several brochures we selected the Witch’s Rock Canopy Tour.

    Their team of guides outfitted us with a helmet, heavy leather gloves and a harness, and then gave us a quick training course. If you aren’t familiar with ziplining, just like we weren’t, the harness is hooked to a small pulley attached on a steel cable, which can be more than a 1,000 feet in length, and may stretch high above a valley before ending at a tree top platform on another mountain peak. The main thing we had to learn was how to use the gloves to keep from spinning around and to brake as we came to a landing platform. Looked easy!

    As they led us off to the beginning of the tour, my knees got a little shaky when I realized that the only way to get to these tree top platforms was to climb straight up a ladder fastened to the side of the tree. I began to wonder how I could have forgotten my slight fear of heights and if I should be doing this. But all thoughts of backing out were put aside when the first person to zip off of the platform was a young girl who was around eight years old. Still, I hung back and observed everyone else before I took my turn. It was a breeze! Well, except for the fact that my braking was a little too aggressive and I stopped before the end of the line. I was quickly rescued by one of the guides.

    Soon we were eagerly flying through the tree tops at maybe forty miles an hour, dangling on nothing but these steel cables. Witch’s Rock Canopy Tour has a total of twelve cables, covering more than 2,500 meters, or a mile and a half. There were also a number of very spindly rope and wire bridges throughout the route to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. We weren’t sure which was actually the more difficult to use, the cables or the bridges. Some of these bridges were hundreds of feet above the forest floor and spanned valleys more than a hundred feet across.

    It actually wasn’t as strenuous or dangerous as it might appear. The guides made sure we were well secured at all times, held onto us until we were ready to leave each platform and were standing by to catch us at the end of each line. They were a great group.

    At the end of the tour, we took some time to relax with a cool drink in the café and enjoy the views from a more stable position.

    

    It was an interesting day, and the zipline cables and rickety bridges made this tour of the rain forest canopy more exciting that we could have imagined. Five stars, highly recommended!

    If you want to see more, check out our zipline video!

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• Backpacking in Olympic Nationa

  • From: chadallen77
  • Description:

    In the Beginning, We Were Ambitious

    I’d had the idea in the back of my head for a couple of years: climb Mt. Ranier in Washington State. I do a lot of hiking, including winter hiking, and Rainier is the destination of choice if you want to step things up a notch and get a taste of real mountaineering. It’s a difficult climb and it's modestly technical—there are glacial traverses, the weather can be extreme, and at 14,411 feet the summit push can induce altitude sickness. About 10,000 climbers attempt the summit each year, the vast majority of them as part of guided trips. Roughly half of these reach the summit. Alas, I would not belong to either of these groups.

    After roping my dad into the mission—he’s an avid mountain biker and I learned to love backcountry hiking from him—I started training. Running, cycling, hiking in upstate New York with a heavy backpack on the weekends. We booked the trip in March, and by the time September rolled around I was feeling confident I could make it to the top on our scheduled ascent the last weekend of that month. My dad was feeling pretty confident too: he’d been mountain biking on a regular basis and was working out in the gym. He’d pulled a calf muscle earlier in the summer at the company softball game, but assured me that it was “95% healed” by mid-August. Later that month, he was on his annual mountain biking trip in Moab, Utah, his final training push. I called my mom while he was there to get the real scoop on his physical condition. She confided that earlier in the week he had called from Moab to say that his calf was bothering him and that he had to “ride like a girl” (that’s my dad for you). This seemed inauspicious, to say the least. When dad got back from Utah I called and grilled him on the details of his physical fitness. He assured me that everything was good to go. It seemed plausible. Kind of. And then I met him at the airport in Seattle...
    
    He arrived a few hours before me (he lives in Michigan, I was coming in from New York), and was waiting in baggage claim when I arrived. He ambled over to greet me with what was not the minor, barely-visible limp of an old injury, but a shambling gait that clearly favored his left leg and made it look like he’d just been hit in the knee with a hockey stick.
    
    Mission Aborted

    The final summit push on Rainier is a 4000 foot vertical gain in a single morning, followed by a 16 mile descent the same day. Even at 95% fitness it would be a stretch, and this seemed more like 30% to me. I think the first thing I said was, “Are you kidding me?” My dad has an abiding belief in his ability to pull off anything through sheer force of will—and if willpower isn’t enough, he’ll usually try to make up the gap with duct tape and hanger wire. In this instance he had built a custom leg brace (he’s a Physical Therapist) out of plastic and machined aluminum. I was going to be climbing the most challenging mountain in the lower-48 with a do-it-yourself cyborg.

    
    We had a heart-to-heart on the spot, and I told him that it wasn’t really about climbing the mountain—in the end I just wanted us to share an adventure. When my brother and I were kids my dad had taken us backpacking in Washington’s Olympic Mountain range four or five summers in a row. Those trips are some of the best memories of my life, and so I suggested we bail on Rainier and do something more low key instead. I was 100% certain that we wouldn’t make the summit at that point. I think Dad was relieved—he knew I wanted to summit Rainier and that we would lose our non-refundable guide fee (next time, buy trip insurance!). But I think he also knew that summiting was out of the question for him.

    So we headed to the REI flagship store in Seattle. If you’re ever in town, be sure to check it out. Even if you’re not an outdoor junkie, it’s worth popping in to see the 65’ glass-enclosed indoor climbing wall, manmade waterfall, and mountain bike test-trails. You can also grab a decent cup of joe at the outdoor coffee shop. There’s plenty of stuff to buy for the non-enthusiast as well. If you need a new daypack and want to have a look at 200 different models, or if you’ve been dying to get your hands on a day-glow purple Nalgene bottle for your desk at work, this is your spot.
    
    We headed over to the U.S. Forest Ranger desk on the second floor, and browsed through the topo maps. We’d been to a lot of the prime destinations in the park on earlier trips, but with the help of the on-site Ranger we settled on a five-day, four-night backpacking trip up the Hoh River Valley to the glacier on Mount Olympus (no Greek deities guaranteed, though). We had planned to rent some of the extreme weather gear for the climb from our outfitter, so we didn’t have sleeping bags or a tent with us. Luckily, the REI store also has an extensive rental shop, so we grabbed some top-notch gear and hit the road.

    On The Trail

     

    At the Hoh River trailhead we phoned home to mom with our itinerary (from a moss-covered payphone booth—no cell phone reception up here), did one last gear check, and set off down the trail. Our destination for the first day was a five mile hike up the trail, the aptly-named Five Mile Island.

    As soon as we set off down the trail, I was struck anew by the scale of the Olympic forests. It’s one of the only temperate rainforests in the world, receiving an average of 150 inches of rainfall a year. I can best describe it as Jurassic—the Cedar trees dwarf anything you see on the east coast, moss covers everything, and giant ferns tower above your head.
    
    We’d heard that elk sightings had been frequent lately, and that large herds had been spotted along the trail. Not more than a mile in, on a section of the trail often used by day-hikers, we stumbled into the middle of a herd of 40 or more elk. I’d never seen elk that close; they're simply massive, and the bulls make a “bugle” call that sounds, well, like a bugle. They seemed aware of, but not frightened by, our presence-- and the herd gradually made its way across the trail about 10 yards in front of us. It was such a hypnotic procession that I completely forgot to reach for the camera. I swear it!
    
    At Five Mile Island we set up camp on a gravel bar in the middle of the Hoh River, fired up the lightweight camp-stove and boiled some water for our freeze-dried dinner. Turkey Chili with Apple Cobbler for desert. I’ve never eaten freeze-dried food except after a long day of hiking with a heavy pack. It tastes pretty good at that point, but I have a feeling it’s only edible if your body is begging for calories. We got a chance to try out the new UV water filter I picked up at REI. Instead of treating water with iodine tablets (which take twenty minutes per liter, and leave an unpleasant aftertaste), or pumping it through a carbon filter (which are bulky and awkward), these compact, pen-shaped devices sport a small UV lamp that uses the same technology employed to sterilize surgical equipment. You just swirl the lamp in a one-liter bottle of water for ninety-seconds and, presto—Giardia and all kinds of other micro- and macro-scopic critters that can ruin your trip are out of commission.
    
    The next day we hiked to Lewis Meadows, another five miles up the trail. We camped in a grassy meadow by the side of the river, and talked to some fellow hikers who had been up to Hoh Lake the day before. They claimed to have seen a dozen black bears grazing on the blueberry meadows on the slopes around the alpine lake. I’ve seen black bears in the wild before and they're amazing—but the report of seeing so many at once seemed unlikely. Nonetheless, we departed from our original plan of hiking up the valley and back to make a one-day side trip up to the lake on the following day.
    
    Bears, Bears, and More Bears.
    
    We weren’t disappointed. It was a grueling, 6-mile climb, with almost 1000-feet of elevation gain per mile. We arrived at the lake in the early afternoon, and it was everything you could ask from an alpine lake. Crystal clear, sitting in a bowl formed by the surrounding alpine meadows that led up to the four summits around the lake, and with views of the glaciers on Mount Olympus. And yes, there were bears. Maybe not a dozen, but we counted at least eight. I’ve never understood how such massive animals can get by on a diet consisting mostly of berries and other flora, but this was definitely black bear heaven—there must have been fifty acres of alpine meadows absolutely covered in blueberry bushes. There were more elk to boot. It was a hard place to leave, but as the afternoon crept on we knew we had to start back down, reaching camp just before dusk.
    
    The next morning, Dad’s calf was feeling the strain of the previous day’s haul, so we decided to lay low and explore the area around Lewis Meadow. In sum: more elk, a lazy afternoon nap by the river, a quick dunk in the icy water, and yet another freeze-dried delicacy.
    
    On the penultimate day, we backtracked down to Five Mile Island. It was raining, so rather than set up camp on the exposed gravel bar, we chose a nice, dry spot under a large spruce to set up the tent. We cooked under the vestibule of the tent’s rain fly, and settled into our toasty sleeping bags. I fell asleep to the pitter-patter of rain on the tent roof, and fell asleep to the sort of pleasant, contradictory thoughts one has after four days on the trail: Why would anyone want to return to civilization? And: I can’t wait to have a cheeseburger.
    
    If it Rains 150 Inches a Year, Chances are You’ll See Some Rain
    
    About two hours later I woke up—the rain had increased in intensity and my feet were wet. In fact, the entire floor of the tent was soaked through and my thermarest was the only thing between me and the large pool of water forming inside the tent. I poked Dad until he stopped snoring and came-to: his feet were in even worse shape than mine. Tent floors are almost waterproof, but absent a groundcover sheet (and we were absent one), they’ll eventually soak through. I struggled into my rain gear, put on my headlamp, and went out into the downpour to assess the situation. The cozy spot we’d chosen under the spruce tree had two major flaws: (1) It was in the middle of a gentle downhill slope; (2) There was an inch of pine needles on the forest floor. This second flaw had originally seemed like a virtue: pine needles make a nice soft bed, and work to relieve the unforgiving cushion of the thermarest.
    
    Now, however, the needles were acting like a giant sponge. The water rolling downhill was being soaked up by the pine needles underneath our tent, which was in turn sucking the water out of the pine needles and into our sleeping bags. I frantically begin lifting the tent edges and scooping out pounds of sopping wet pine needles with my arms. I managed to clear things out pretty well, but now the tent floor was soaked and no longer waterproof, so the water rolling downhill and passing under the tent floor was still making things wet on the inside. I was cold, wet and tired, and none of these conditions seemed likely to improve without drastic measures. By drastic measures I mean: water diversion ditches. These are strictly prohibited within the park, because they disturb the natural soil structure and contribute to erosion. But my project was relatively small, and I was, as I said, cold, wet and tired. I found a couple of sticks that vaguely resembled shovels (in the way that sticks resemble shovels only when you’re in such a situation), and begin digging furiously. Within fifteen minutes I had constructed an elaborate network of ditches, canals and drainage pools that the Romans would have been jealous of. I crawled back into the tent, we dried out the floor with our pack towels, and I took a few minutes to watch my waterworks in action. Then I was out like a light, and didn’t wake up until the clouds broke and the morning sun started to heat up the inside of the tent.
    
    We broke camp for the last time, ate some hot oatmeal, and headed back to the trailhead. Along the way we passed a couple of groups heading up the valley. We told them about the herds of elk and the swarms of bears, but they clearly thought were just spinning a yarn. I hope they were proven wrong. Back at the trailhead we packed up our gear, changed into clean clothes and headed to the closest town we could find with a burger joint.

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
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• West Coast Road Trip

  • From: Odin
  • Description:

    

    In October 2007, Mrs. Odin and I took a road trip from San Francisco to L.A. Driving on streets like this one reminded me of one of the stresses of living there. I had forgotten this, but there are a lot of intersections like this in the city, where you cross the cross street and then are at the edge of a slope so steep you can't see over the edge. And it's really unnerving, because a kid could run out into the street in front of/below you and you would not see him in time. So even though it was great to be back there, I could have done without the driving.

    But anyway, we were in SF after a long absence, and it was great. We went to the de Young museum and the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park, and we went for a long walk in the Presidio. We didn't make it over to Russian Hill, where I once lived, but that's OK.

    

    We went north first when we left SF. My cousin had recommended that we see the di Rosa Preserve, a huge tract of land in the wine country that is covered in artworks. The owner collected whatever he liked and piled it all together in his house, a couple of exhibition spaces, and even out in the fields. There were a lot of paintings, a couple of Burning Man-esque art cars, and a car hanging from a tree. There was also a statue of an angel in a harness hanging above a jumble of statues in a heap on the floor; the hanging angel, attached to a mechanism like a ceiling fan (I guess), was spinning slowly. Also, there were these mannequin arms in a field. They look a little creepy, right? But still, I like them. I wonder if they represent the dead in the ground, or maybe they're a nightmare of second grade.

    

    I'm not sure what any of it meant, but some of it was really fun to look at. As were the peacocks roaming the grounds. They didn't seem too bothered by all the people walking around them and taking their pictures.

    

    The next day, we headed south, back through SF and on to Big Sur. Mrs. Odin didn't get all the fuss about Big Sur (she thought it would like like Malibu) until we got there. Then she saw the coastline and took a lot of pictures like this one.

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  • 1 year ago
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