Life in the Slow Lane

This week we skipped a few days of Wisconsin in Winter because we were in (not terribly sunny) California. The family members who are in school came back on Sunday. The rest of us came back on Tuesday. Or at least we tried to come back on Tuesday. As one of the flight attendants so gently put it, this was the trip from h***. I wouldn't put it like that... even if my checked luggage mysteriously managed to find a quicker way back to Madison than I did. (I had a bit of deja vu as the airline agent assured me that the shortest route between Los Angeles and Madison is, indeed, via Seattle.) I'll just say we certainly earned our wings. Number of small children traveling with me: 2 Number of flight delays: 2 Number of flights canceled: 2 Number of flights missed: 2 Number of reroutes: 2 Number of hours sitting on tarmac waiting for mechanical issue to be resolved: 2 Number of times plane taxied out to take-off only to return to gate: 2 Number of times I was directed to ...

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but we caved. Friday night at 8:23 found us racing to the Disney Store to purchase annual passes so we wouldn't need to stand in line Saturday morning. Don't ask us exactly how we justified the purchase, but let's just say this month we are eating out of the abundance of our freezer and pantry supplies rather than accomplishing our normal grocery routine in an attempt to diminish the impact to our savings. And look... standing in line to meet Winnie the Pooh: And with the stubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff: Really, believe me, it was meant to be... I mean... we just happened to be at Pooh's Thoughtful Spot for the only 15 minutes when all of our favorite residents of the Hundred Acre Woods were there to take pictures. I know this still doesn't quite justify a spur of the minute purchase of annual passes to Disneyland, but look at those eyes! Pooh Corner was clearly a hit. CutieLittleBoy requested we r...

There are many reasons to take public transportation, not the least of which is because CutieLittleBoy asks repeatedly to get on the "bus/train". So we agree: Vacation Day 1 is all about riding the bus/train.  For those of my readers who take public transportation every day, please stop laughing. I once read an article by a man involved in urban ministry who preached the necessity of teaching children how to use public transportation. As a rite of passage he took each of his three children downtown at the age of five and assigned them the task of making it back home by themselves. (I could possibly be wrong about the age, but it was shockingly early.) As a postscript he included the comment that he secretly shadowed his children to make sure they were safe, but I always figured he included that only at the insistence of his wife who likely spent the entire day sitting at the kitchen table biting her nails and watching the second hand inch around the clock. Not...

The year 2013, we've decided, is the year of the Los Angeles vacation. Since getting married, SOS and I have alternated between domestic and international destinations for our vacations. After our two weeks in the Cook Islands in 2012, this year calls for something a little closer to home. Problem is, we think our normal vacation time (and hours) might be otherwise occupied. So where can you go for vacation experiences and keep it all contained to weekends? There's no place like home: Los Angeles, let the good times roll.

1)  Unless you are on a commuter route, plan on being late.  Because Amtrak rents rails from freighter companies, freight trains get the right of way. Delays also happen on account of engine trouble (for your train or another on the tracks), objects on the rails (animals, water, another train), maintenance of track or signaling system, etc., etc. We had some early arrivals and some on time arrivals, but every time we had someone waiting for us, we were late. 2)  Bring ear plugs, especially if you are riding in coach . Trains don't provide quite as much white noise as airplanes, so you may get stuck sitting in front of the woman who figures now is the best time to call all of her friends to retell (and retell) the same gruesome, juicy story she heard last night.  Or you may end up two seats up and across the aisle from two passengers who start the 10 hour journey as strangers and DO NOT STOP TALKING until they have exhausted everyone's ears but their own.  Sleep...

One of the best things about our trip around the country is the number of things I knew but didn't know until I experienced it first hand. For instance, in case you didn't know, Texas is a big state.  Our train arrived in El Paso at about 7 in the morning and we spent all that day and into mid morning the next traveling through Texas (with the exception of our hour and a half in San Antonio, as previously mentioned ). Texas has a lot of beautiful places, but it also has a whole lot of places that look just like what we saw five minutes ago and five minutes before that and even five hours before that. While each of us three enjoyed watching our scenic routes throughout our trip, halfway through Texas, CutieBabyBoy found something far more interesting to watch than more of Texas.

After two full days in the nation's Capitol, SOS and I found ourselves in small town America to celebrate the Fourth of July. So small, in fact, that we and our host family drove fifteen miles to find a small town big enough to have an Independence Day parade. I've never been to a Fourth of July parade that I recall, but someone passed along a bit of insight they had overheard on the subject: if you are in or attend an Independence Day parade, you are probably a Republican. I was wondering where everyone else was. We saw classic cars, fire engines and police cars. Veterans of Foreign Wars marched or rode in the bed of a big truck. Red convertibles crawled by with the city mayor and other elected officers. And then the tractors! I'm not quite sure why tractors are patriotic, but I've never seen so many tractors all in one place outside of a John Deere ad. After the tractors proceeded what may have been every red automobile in town, representing various lo...

On Wednesday all day long I sang myself a song that went something like this: remember it snows and snow is cold. Remember it snows and snow is not fun to drive in. Remember it snows and you would need to shovel it. There are many verses to this song and as we drove through the beautiful countryside I kept adding more verses. Otherwise I think SOS and I would have put an offer on a little house and moved. Really, there was nothing that we encountered all day long that detracted from the siren call of the rolling farms and wooded streams and charming architecture... Nothing except for the tenuous grasp I have on the concept of snow. As if the scenery itself weren't enough to lure us, we spent the afternoon in the town of Lititz which is home to the oldest pretzel bakery in the US. Their fresh baked soft pretzels make you forget you missed lunch. And as if more magnetic pull was necessary, this is also the home to a chocolate factory that sends emissaries of chocolate frag...

If you had an hour and a half in San Antonio at ten o'clock at night, what would you do? Amtrak trains do some splitting and rearranging in San Antonio and while they do, you have the option of staying on the train without power or getting off the train. We chose to get off the train and wandered into the station. There we discovered that the tv was tuned to Nick Jr. We were initially quite pleased that at least we were not obliged to learn about the sex lives of prisoners, as we had been at the station in Arizona, but nevertheless, we could feel our brain cells dying. I asked SOS what time we needed to be back on the train three times and each time he would begin to answer but then the the tv show would kill the cells required for him to finish his answer, so I suggested we go on a walk, provided the area did not look too scary. From the parking lot we thought it looked safe enough to go a little further and from there we found a little map of the near vicinity... Ruth'...

I've decided that adventure and comfort are almost mutually exclusive. Today CutieBabyBoy woke up at a quarter to five with the runniest runny nose. Of course SOS and I had been up late packing and then I woke up in the middle of the night with a litany of To Do and so was up for a couple hours. It is not the recommended way of starting a long trip, but so many trips begin similarly. I was thinking about our early start on the day at about six PM when our train slowed to a stop by the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is beautiful in a stark harshness that makes you glad you are merely passing through. The sun was edging lower and the soft light began to make the dry ravines snaking to the treeless shore almost alluring. And then there was an announcement on the intercom about waiting for a mechanic so enjoy our view of the scenic Salton Sea. Like I said, the Salton Sea is best enjoyed knowing that you are merely passing through. After a long while we were moving again, but slowly. ...

I know it. Three weeks, more than 170 hours on a train, 8232 miles to travel, a country to see. As you can imagine, a trip of this magnitude requires quite the planning. Fortunately, my sweet husband is gifted in coordinating logistics. This has allowed me to spend my time agonizing over other critical matters like, "Which train puns can I squeeze into everyday conversation?" or "How many cliche comments can I make about life being the journey and not the destination?" Obviously, I have the more difficult role in this vacation planning. Which reminds me that I should go help pack lunches for our train time. I've just received word that some of the packaging on the snacks we bought may be too voluminous to fit in our wheeled cooler. I have a few ideas I'd like to try as to how to fix that problem.

I am turning this blog into a food blog for just a bit to help out all of my readers who fell in love in Northeastern Brazil. That is... fell in love with tapiocas in Northeastern Brazil. For those of my readers who have not had the gastronomic pleasure of eating a hot tapioca on a crowded street corner, let me first inform you that a tapioca is not a pudding. Nor is a tapioca the pearls you find at the bottom of your boba tea. Imagine an omelet-type food only without eggs. To the uninitiated it may sound weird and not worth the effort of mustering up enough Portuguese to place your order, but you would be wrong. Please don't be offended by that. The other reason I am turning this blog into a food blog for a moment is because my husband, also known to readers as my S.O.S. (Significant Other, Sweetheart) is too excited by his culinary success to bother with sitting down to inform the world about this important breakthrough. S.O.S. has, since he first tasted tapioca goodness on th...

The number of digital photos taken on my trip to Peru. I, of course, did not have a digital camera. But someone had the brilliant idea that we would collect everybody's pictures and combine them on to a CD. I do appreciate that, as I couldn't get my flash to work on my film camera, but 3026? I don't even have the time to figure out how to get the computer to open the file, much less look through it. Although, if you want a peak at a few of the pictures I took, which are not on the CD, take a quick trip over to my flickr account. Maybe one of these days I will get some narration on them.

Coming through the airport in Lima, I became swept up in the closest thing to a mob I have ever been in. Late night, long lines, inches away from the final security check point, and then everyone was redirected past the long line they just stood in, to a desk about 15 feet long. When approximately 200 people swarm around a fifteen foot long desk, yelling, shoving passports in faces, and pushing through the crowd, you begin to look around for any potential trigger that could turn the sparks into an explosion. Airports are already a place of tension: signs that say "Jokes aren't funny", delays, lines, prices of food, miles of corridors to walk between ticketing and departure gate, carry-on-bags that will leave your shoulders mismatched for years to come. Oh, and yes, how could I forget the now standard Plexiglas crates of all forbidden items: combustibles, fire arms, knives, and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nail files. And so there I stood in the middle of a new...

In the middle of a busy Saturday morning in the shopping district, among all of the sights and sounds and pressing close of people and taxis, I caught a glimpse of what must be the real reason I came to Peru: grenadias . Grenadias are grand ideas: a passion fruit shaped like a grenade (hence the name) full of little juice covered seeds resembling fish eggs. With a description like that, you might wonder why they are grand ideas, but as a kid grenadias were a special treat, more desired than chocolate even. Perhaps it was because we only were able to get them when we were staying in Bogota. Or maybe it was because we were only each allowed one or maybe even only a half. Or maybe it is the combination of sweet and tangy and slippery and crunchy and the fun little bowl the shell makes. But when more than ten years of searching comes to an end in the middle of a busy street, on a crowded sidewalk, there is only one solution: pull out some money and make a purchase. Of course in such a ...

During the very ceremonious opening ceremonies on the first day of our work here, a woman got up on stage to lead the audience in singing. Perhaps I'm spoiled in the quality of music I am privileged to listen to, but quite frankly, it was awful. It was so awful that I found it nearly impossible to sing along and found myself thinking "Even I could sing better than that." Last night was the very ceremonious closing ceremony. We arrived on time, which turned out to be an hour before everyone else arrived. But apparently that was a good choice, because on the program, the translators were scheduled to sing. At least I had half an hour to remember where I put my singing voice. And half an hour to convince myself that if that other lady could sing, so could I. This was important to consider as I had been elected to sing with the microphone, since I actually knew the song we were going to sing. Of course, I didn't know when we were scheduled to sing, nor what our cue...

Normal communication at its best is like swiss cheese: It has holes. The holes are what is not understood or what is lost even before leaving the mouth of the speaker. And, as we all know, translating adds more holes. And if you happen to like cheese and all you get are holes, it can be quite disappointing. So with my translating abilities ("leather" instead of "neck" and "brakes" instead of "braids") I've been giving out a lot of holey cheese. But occasionally I can cover up one of the holes spoken, I can put a little more cheese back into the conversation. Of course, no one realizes the shifting holes but me, but that is probably a good thing: no one wants to eat cheese that moves.

For all you might hear about it just being an issue of mind over matter, let me tell you that it is disappointing to realize that the problem is not that easy to solve in the wee hours of the morning. Of course nothing is easy to solve in the wee hours of the morning when one should be asleep and instead is sicker than she's been in a long time. Barely in country 24 hours, and running out of clean laundry. This whole "packing light" thing seems to be about as effective as "mind over matter".

Corn harvest Originally uploaded by biukalee Just because I want to share more pictures.

Gloria Originally uploaded by biukalee With a little bit of food, water, and something to keep the sun and rain off me, I could stay in this little corner for a very long time. From here, the noise of the city -- dogs barking, kids yelling, horns, motorcycles' and cars' engines, banging music from a hundred different houses, goats bleating, and dozens of voices -- recedes into a murmur of humanity that allows for me to hear the wind entangling the grasses around me. From here, the houses look quaint and charming, you can almost forget that the people in the kitchen have front row seats to the toilet and shower, that water must be hauled, and that mosquitoes are more prevalent than places to stand or sit. But as uncomfortable as some of this is, there is a strange feeling that if I walked a ways, through the tall grasses, between swaying palm trees, over the dirt road destroyed by heavy rains, I could find my way home. I would remember what it was like to walk barefo...