Summer Vacation, part 2

So we got off the train, drove to Mom's house in Sequim, Washington, and got a good night's sleep after a long day of travelling. We spent the next week hanging out with Mom and Dad, seeing Bob for a few days, working (Doc has a huge job right now and worked all day every day and half the nights too... when you own your own business, the work is unpredictable), taking the dog for long walks in the forest, snoozing on the patio in the 65 degree sunshine, picking strawberries (44 pounds, from Cameron Berry Farm!), going in to town, going to the beach with the dog, buying fireworks from the Indian reservation down the road and shooting them off on the driveway on the 4th of July, eating lots and lots of Mom's delicious cooking and Dad's smoked brisket, seeing aunts and uncles and cousins and old family friends, shopping (thanks, Mom, for the new maternity clothes!), playing endless fetch with the dog, watching Jonny Quest with Doc and Bob, sitting wrapped in a blanket in front of the fireplace (yes, in July!), enjoying the smell of fresh fir trees and sweet grasses, and generally having a wonderful, relaxing time.

The weather was absolutely fabulous. We had a few days of rain and/or mist but the rest of the time was sunshine almost all day long. The temperature stayed around 60 or so on the rainy days, and might have reached 70 on the sunny days. Cool enough to need long sleeves in the shade!

I discovered that nonalcoholic wine tastes like grape juice that something has gone terribly wrong with. Lesson learned.

We got home late last night, and it was great to see our kitties but I really didn't want to come home.  Why do I still live in Texas? Sigh.

Summer Vacation!

I have been on VACATION!

Yay, vacation!!

Doc and I flew to San Jose, where we stayed with Arushi and Shyamal for a few days at their place in Mountain View. The fires in Big Sur were still burning and there was a lot of smoke in the air. It hung like a pink-brown cloud over everything, and made our eyes sting. We visited the redwood forest in Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, went into San Francisco one afternoon, swam in her pool, did a little shopping, and went out to Napa County and ate at a fantastic place called Greystone Restaurant, run by the Culinary Institute of America, where i had the best piece of fish I have ever eaten in my entire life. It was halibut, pan-fried in olive oil with just a bit of salt and pepper, and probably caught mere hours prior. It was the most amazingly perfect texture all the way through, and served on a bed of morel mushrooms and tiny baby squash, sauteed in butter.

The weather in northern California is fantastic in the summer. I'm afraid that I underpacked for this trip, bringing along mostly tank tops and capri pants, when what I apparently really needed was long pants and sweatshirts!

We hopped aboard an Amtrak train, the "Coast Starlight," to head up north to Seattle. Train travel is quite enjoyable. It takes longer to get to your destination, but is cheaper and much more scenic, relaxed, roomy, and social than flying. Doc and I rented a small sleeper cabin instead of coach seats, and it was a huge improvement over our last train trip ten years ago, when Doc had a severe case of the flu in coach. The room was tiny, barely wider than the width of a seat, but we could shut the doors and fold down two beds and the privacy was worth every penny. Plus, all meals are included in the price of the room, and although the food was not awful (certainly better than you might expect on a train), the a la carte meal prices were quite inflated. We would have easily spent more than the cost of the room upgrade on meals alone, had we traveled in coach!

The route along the coast is very scenic and beautiful, especially through Oregon. The train huffs and puffs its way along the side of mountains through all this gorgeous countryside. You really can't beat morning sunlight sparkling down on a glittering mountain stream hundreds of yards below, and rocky rapids surrounded by tall fir trees.

The train was three hours late getting into the station in Seattle (11:30 at night!) because, sadly, someone had a heart attack on board the night before and the train had to stop in the middle of nowhere in California to wait for the Careflight helicopters to arrive. We also had numerous electrical problems onboard that resulted in the lights going out every now and again -- this is especially inconvenient when you are using the tiny airplane-style bathroom, which has no windows.

A late train wouldn't normally be that big of a problem, except that my mom and dad had arranged to pick us up at the station and drive us back to their house... two and a half hours away. By the time we got to their place it was nearly 2 a.m. I was so tired from having barely slept on the train the night before, I just fell right into bed and don't even remember my head hitting the pillow.

I'm really tired now, in fact... I'm going to post some photos and then write more about the vacation later!

More Boston... Snowstorm and Aquarium

Bob digs out his car from underneath 8 inches of fresh powdery snow.


The parking lot behind Bob's building.


The blue sky against the snow was gorgeous.


A view looking out over the snowy rooftops of Somerville.


We finally made it to the New England Aquarium; we tried to go the day before but it closed early due to snowstorm.

Scenes from Boston

Doc and I went to Boston for a conference (Web Design World, which was really a fantastic conference) and to visit Bob for a few days. Boston is a beautiful city, especially in winter. It's been really cold and wet and snowy here, and I love it.

The churches in Boston are so beautiful that they almost make me want to actually GO to church!


We took a self portrait on the street.


This is the Christian Science Church.


The Boston Public Library is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. This is part of the main entrance hall and stairs.


The library had an exhibit of intricately detailed dioramas.








I love Johnny Cupcakes!! Especially the cupcake-and-crossbones logo.


Me and Doc next to a subway station.


I love wearing my scarf and coat.


Not the Old North Church, but the Old South Church.


A big pile of icy snow.


Today we ate breakfast at a place down the street from Bob, then hopped on the subway to go to the Aquarium and the Science Museum. By the time we started off to the train station, the snow was coming down pretty heavily.



Bob and I at the Aquarium. It had closed 2 hours before we got there, due to heavy snow.


This is the snowstorm that seemed to be shutting down the whole city.

Photoshop World Las Vegas

Doc and I spent a couple of days last week in Las Vegas for the Photoshop World conference. The conference was really good and I learned a lot about a lot of things, and came home with "The Phone Book," the name everyone was calling the 2-1/2-inch-thick conference workbook. That thing is amazing; it's got all the instructors' notes and presentations from all the sessions, so if you weren't able to attend a class you still have the materials from it.

Despite both of us being sick in various ways (see last post), we still managed to have fun. Neither of us really wanted to "Vegas it up" this time, so we didn't feel pressured to go to expensive shows or drink or gamble. We did a lot of walking around, taking photos. On our last day, I gave Doc $3 to put into a slot machine and 2 minutes later he cashed out with $43. Not bad! We bought a nice lunch.

A few interesting observations: In Las Vegas, it's sometimes hard to tell the real whores from the regular tourists that are just dressed that way. Everything in Las Vegas is about double the cost that it would be almost anywhere else. "But it's a dry heat" is bullshit. Adequately padded shoes may not look fashionable, but they're crucial.

I estimate that I may have walked close to 5 miles each day of the conference (in flat sandals.... owwwww my feet). I think it was about 1/2 mile between our hotel room and the convention center, and this was in the same freaking hotel. All the restaurants except for one in the Land of Foodcourtia in the convention center were closed. The one that was open had only greasy fried food, hot dogs, and $9.50 hamburgers. We ate there only once, and then trekked 1-1/2 miles over to the Luxor hotel for lunch on the other days.

This is a good representation of what it feels like in the casinos. Imagine sucking in a lungful of stale smoky air to complete the picture.


The sunset was quite lovely. These colors are fairly accurate.


The castle at cheesy Excalibur.


Mandalay Bay had a really nice "beach" area with a wave pool filled with showoffy 17 year old boys, and a couple of regular pools filled with fat women of questionable sexuality on inner tubes. I spent a little time soaking up the sun, covered in sunscreen of course, reading and making vitamin D.


Paris was lovely, as usual, with the painted ceiling and cobblestone "streets." As a side note, Paris and Aladdin used to be connected.... but now Aladdin is the Planet Hollywood Hotel. They're taking down all the beautiful Middle Eastern decor and replacing it with flat "glam" Hollywood looking stuff. No more sandstone arches, painted ceiling, or fake thunderstorms.


We paused for a self portrait on a bench in Planet Hollywood. 1 a.m., our feet hurt and we were exhausted from walking.


A fake crystal chandelier.

Memories of Washington

I mentioned in a previous post from my recent vacation that I saw one of my cousins for the first time in years, and initially thought that his becoming a father had mellowed his angry energy. As it turns out, he's not actually interested in assuming the responsibility of being a father and is instead "allowing" his wife to do all the work of raising their two young sons, ages 3 years and 5 months. The wife is overwhelmed and cries daily. My sweet generous mom offered to babysit the kids one day a week while she's living nearby, so the wife can go have some time to herself or with friends.

It's so sad how self-centered he has turned out, because he was always such a caring, responsible kid when we were growing up. He is the oldest of the cousins; two years older than his brother and me.

I listened to an episode of This American Life recently on the subject of summer camp, and the differences between "camp kids" and "non-camp kids." Kids who go to camp seem to have a shared understanding of this amazing experience, and it can be the most important thing in your young life. They look forward all year to summer. Its a very emotional response, a feeling of belonging to something special that other people don't understand.

I felt that way too when I was young, only it wasn't about camp; it was about going to Washington State each summer to see my grandma and hang out with my cousins John, Reed, and Lissy for a few weeks. I cannot even find the words to express how much these summers meant to me, how much I looked forward to them. I belonged to a special group of kids who got to stay with my amazing Grandma in her house in the forest above the beach, far away from civilization. It was magic.

Grandma died from ovarian cancer in 1984, when I was 11. That was the end of summers in Washington. My mom and her brother and sister had to sell Grandma's house, I think because they didn't think they could afford to keep it, something about taxes (one of the biggest regrets in her life, she now says). I was fast approaching the age where I might not have wanted to spend summers away from my friends, hanging out with my little brothers, so I'm glad in a way that my memories remain as magical as they do, untainted by the bad attitudes of adolescence.

Grandma's house
Grandma lived on Johnson's point, a little peninsula of land north of Olympia. Her house was a little one-bedroom A-frame with a finished attic, painted red, on 5 acres of wooded land. It sat about 20 feet back from the edge of a bank that, in my memory, was hundreds of feet high, but was probably in reality more like 30 feet above the beach. She had a small deck out the front door that overlooked the water, and a carport and shed in back. Behind the house was a small garden, and beyond that, the 5 acres of wild ferny fir-filled forest.

The living room had a large picture window overlooking the deck, a wood burning stove, and an open kitchen area. Upstairs was a large open room, and the peaked roof made the whole thing a big triangle. A large wardrobe separated the room into two halves (it was so large that the house was built around it; there's no way to get it out!) and a bed was on the side nearest to the beach. My parents slept there. Us kids slept on Japanese futon mattresses in the little angled spaces under the eaves.

Mattress Rides
The stairs were located near the back door, with a door at both the bottom and the top. We loved to take one of the futon mattresses, position it at the top of the stairs, and take a flying leap, stomach first, sliding down the stairway and tumbling out into the hallway at the bottom. Or, knocking head-first against the door at the bottom of the stairs if we had it closed, which was more fun than it sounds now.

At the top of the stairway, when you turned right there was a small bathroom (toilet and sink only), and when you turned left, you met up with the door to The Attic Space.

The Attic Space
I absolutely adored this little attic space. Through the door, down a tiny hallway, around the corner, and then BAM! Books galore. Boxes of old clothing, magazines, and newspapers. It smelled like a library. It was here that I discovered Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Japanese story books, and dozens of back issues of Reader's Digest. I would pick a book, lie on a braided rug on the dusty wooden floor, and read for hours until the daylight coming through the small window faded away. I never thought of Tom Sawyer as a book that we were forced to read for school; it was a fantastic story that I discovered in Grandma's house.

The Madrona Tree
To get to the beach, you had to carefully pick your way down a series of mossy wooden steps laid on narrow tracks cut horizontally into the bank, surrounded by tangly trees and blackberry vines. A few yards away, the stairs met up with another set from next-door neighbor Fran's house, and from there proceeded practically straight down, ladder-fashion, until they reached the beach.


(apologies for the poor quality of the photo; it was taken in 1996 on my very first digital camera, an Apple QuickTake 200, with 640x480 @ 72dpi resolution!)

Each neighbor owned a little parcel of the beach, but it was a really friendly community and everyone knew everyone else. Nobody minded other peoples' kids and grandkids playing on their section of beach. Near the Vavers' property to the west, a madrona tree grew practically horizontally out of the bank at beach level. We loved to climb in, up, and through this tree. Madrona trees have very smooth bright orange flesh and thin green bark that easily peels off. And we LOVED to peel. We also carved all our names into the big branch of this tree one year, and for years and years afterwards we could still see the impressions.

One of our favorite things to do was have a "weenie roast" on the beach. Hot dogs, potato chips, sodas, sitting on a blanket under the trees, trying to avoid the sand fleas. I never did like hot dogs, no matter how hard I tried, and would often just eat cheese and mustard in a bun without the hot dog messing things up. Sometimes for dessert we'd roast marshmallows and make s'mores. I wasn't much into the marshmallows and would rather just eat melted chocolate on a graham cracker!



Fourth of July
Fireworks were legal where Grandma lived, and so every year around the first of July, Uncle John would take all of us kids to a fireworks stand in town, where we'd blow our hard-earned allowances on black cats, jumping jacks, snakes, tanks, roman candles, sparklers, and such. Uncle John would go to a nearby Indian Reservation and pick up the "grownup" fireworks — bottle rockets, M80s. We were never allowed to touch those, only to watch.

So on July Fourth, we'd have a weenie roast on the beach, and when it got dark we'd set off all our fireworks. One of our favorite things to do was to enclose a lit Jumping Jack inside an empty clam shell and toss it into the water. We also had our own little family "urban legend': Supposedly when Uncle John was a boy, he shot off a roman candle but instead of digging it down into the sand like he was supposed to, he held it in his hand while it was shooting off. He dropped it and realized in a sudden panic that he couldn't see, so he ran screaming back to Grandma that he was blind! Until, of course, she told him to open his eyes.

Treehouse
About halfway between Grandma's house and the road, down her long gravel driveway through the forest, was a most magnificent treehouse. It had been built some time in the 1950s, I think, and I'm really not sure who built it, actually. But it was completely falling apart, totally dangerous, and quite off-limits to us kids. So of course we spent as much time as we could in it without getting caught. It seemed so far up in the tree, up a little rotting ladder of planks nailed to the trunk, but most likely it was only 10 or 15 feet off the ground. Inside was a little kid-sized sofa, a real glass window, and some plates and silverware on a little table. I think it was even carpeted. Everything was dusty and covered in moss and lichens, but we absolutely loved it. A pulley on a metal cable ran from the trunk near the treehouse door down to the base of another tree a few yards away. None of us were ever quite brave enough to haul the pulley up to the top and use it as a zip line, but we all sure thought about it a lot.

Auntie Fran
Auntie Fran and Uncle Stu lived next door to Grandma, in their own wonderful house overlooking the beach, complete with an acre or two of apple orchards. They were not blood related, but might as well be, we were all so close. I think we spent as much time at Fran's house as we did at Grandma's, especially when her grandson Jesse, who was about my age, was in town.

Fran also had a pool! Why would we want to swim in a pool when there was a perfectly good beach just yards away? Well, when the water in the Sound is around 50 degrees, it's hard to swim in it for long without going numb! Fran's pool was large and rectangular, and surrounded by large glass panels on north and south, the house on the east, and the poolhouse on the west. The poolhouse had a little room with a pullout sofa for guests and a bathroom with a shower and a closet that had pool toys and extra swimsuits in it.

TRON and Dilly Bars
When we weren't in her pool, we might be watching a movie on her VCR. Not many people had VCRs in the early 1980s. I first saw one of my all-time favorite movies, TRON, in Fran's living room. Sometimes she would take a few of us kids into town in the back of her little blue Toyota pickup (these were the days before it was unsafe to do so!), and we'd stop at the electronics store to pick up a movie (these were the days before Blockbuster, when you rented movies out of a little room at the back of appliance stores that sold VCRs). Sometimes we would stop off at Dairy Queen for some Dilly Bars, which Fran always kept stocked in her freezer for us.

Jesse
Jesse was one of my best friends, and during the school year we would write each other letters in a secret cipher code that we invented. Jesse and his little brother Jeff had a gasoline-powered go-kart! Under adult semi-supervision, we were even allowed to drive it. We had great fun tearing up and down the long gravel driveway out to the road, and back again. Once my cousin Lissy, when she was probably only six years old, panicked and forgot where the brake was and almost ran full-speed into Grandma's house. The semi-supervision increased to full-on overprotectiveness after that.

Once, Jesse and I got ahold of an old hammock somewhere. We cleared out a little space in the forest behind Grandma's garden, tied it between two fir trees, and decided that we would make a little money by charging for hammock rides. (Who we planned to charge, I have no idea!) We needed something announcing our new business, so I got some magic markers and a sheet of paper and made a sign to tack up to a tree in front of our shop. Being practical, we realized that we probably needed to put a weight limit on the hammock, so we did what any reasonable 9 year olds would do: we asked my mom how much she weighed. We were just thinking, well, adults are adults and they probably all weigh the same, so we'll just ask the closest one. My mom, on the other hand, was probably thinking, "These kids think I'm the biggest person around!" She decided to have some fun with it and told us "I weigh 379 and 3/4 pounds!" Having no concept of scale, or even any idea how much WE weighed ourselves, we took her at her word and wrote, "Weight Limit: 379 and 3/4 pounds!"

*****

I guess I don't have a really good closing to this whole story, other than to say that these few memories are only the first ones that popped to mind. I have so many others. These were some of the most amazing and wonderful times in my childhood.

Last Day of Roadtrip: Coming Home

No matter where you've been or how good a time you've had, it's always nice to come home from vacation to your familiar environment. Your family, your cats, your own bed, your own shower.

However, it took me twice as long as it should have to actually arrive home.

My plane was delayed for 90 minutes due to bad weather in Dallas. Once airborne, things went fine until the pilot announced that we'd have to change the flight path and go way out of our way to avoid some bad weather. Then we flew in 300 mile diameter circles around Dallas for a while before turning around and heading to San Antonio to land, refuel, and wait out the storms in Dallas. Originally we were scheduled to arrive in Dallas at 5:30 p.m., and we didn't get there until well after 9.

To add to the fun, a few minutes after landing in San Antonio the flight attendants announced that the bathrooms were "full" and would be closed until further notice. I had just taken advantage of the facilities and so I remained comfortable until we finally deplaned in Dallas, unlike some of the unluckier cross-legged passengers.

I guess this is not really that interesting of a story, other than to say I was on a plane for 8 hours instead of the normal 4, and also that airplane food is no longer free, which I find mildly insulting considering the rather dubious quality of said food in the first place. I strongly feel that when you pay anywhere from $250 to $1000 or more for a plane ticket, the least they can do is throw in a soggy turkey sandwich and dried out carrot sticks gratis.

And do you remember when airlines would charge you to rent a set of earphones? Doc notes that their little jacks were proprietary, utilising some sort of whooshing air-based sound transmission system of a horribly tinny quality, and if you owned your own set of earphones you were out of luck because they wouldn't fit in the jacks.

Of course, that was also when in-flight entertainment was free (even if it was just nine channels of radio through the arms of your seats). Now you're charged $10 to rent a little device that plays, on a 5" screen, a select (read: crappy) set of films or television shows, chock full of advertisements.

Roadtrip Days 8 & 9: Redmond

Saturday we spent mostly with Mike. We ate breakfast at what is apparently the only bagel shop in the entirety of the Seattle area (with Mike, as usual, not eating). Then we went with Mom to an appliance shop where she is ordering her new kitchen appliances for the new house. Good thing, too, 'cause she changed her mind about all of them once she was able to see them in person and talk to a salesperson. She picked a dishwasher, stove, oven, refrigerator, range hood, and microwave oven.

Then we accompanied Mike to the liquor store for a bottle of his favorite tequila (which, I worry, serves as his dinner on many nights). Don't let it be said that my family can't drink. I'm the odd one out, it would seem, as far as alcohol habits; one or two drinks per week is more than enough for my tastes.

Mike seems to be opening up a little as the days wear on, and by that I mean he's not responding entirely in monosyllables and occasionally you can actually hear what he says. I really feel bad for him and feel like I should be a good sister and do something to help him, but I think he's still at a point where he doesn't want help and doesn't particularly even want to feel better, and I totally understand that. So I've been giving him his space, not forcing conversations, trying to make him smile on occasion, and talking with him about things that interest him (food, wine, migraine).

His house is in such disrepair it's depressing. All the renovations that he and Vanessa started (actually I think it was entirely Mike doing the work) just sit half finished. He has no motivation to complete them, and I don't think I would either in his situation.





We sat around the house in the afternoon, working on our computers or watching the TV. In the evening, Mom and I drove out to a place called Triple XXX Root Beer Drive In in Issaquah to pick up dinner (burgers, fries, root beer floats). The place was a retro-nostalgia 50s style drive in diner, with 50s music on the loudspeakers, people with their classic cars in the parking lot, and 50s memorabilia plastered over every square inch of the place. Mike asked us to bring him some insanely large super special burger that was at least 8 inches in diameter.

Last night the moon and clouds looked particularly pretty, so I took some long exposure pictures after it finally got dark enough, which was about 10:45 p.m. (the days are longer here in the summers than in Texas because of how far north it is).





Today we drove out to Sequim to show Mike the house and get his opinions on things that might need to be done, such as reinforcing the floors underneath the kitchen and bathroom. Mike has done a lot of renovation on his house and he does beautiful work, so Mom wanted to see if he thought that they needed to make any changes. I told him that he could get a second job as a contractor.

That drive to Sequim is LOOOOOONG. It's about 140 miles from Mike's house to there, each way. I've done it 3 times now. I think, all told, I've probably been in the car for 3500 miles in the past 9 days. I'm really tired of it, but the funny thing is, these drives back and forth to Sequim seem MUCH longer than the 650 mile days we were doing to get here in the first place.

At least on the way back we stopped by John's (about the halfway point) so Mike could try to get Mom's outgoing e-mail to work (no dice), so it was nice to have a little break. I laid under their cherry tree outside and called Doc. I can't wait to see him tomorrow.

This evening we went to a nice Italian place called Grazie's (in Factoria) for dinner. The food was nice, and I even tasted Mike's CALAMARI, if you can believe it! Not the little deep fried rubber bands that a lot of places serve as an appetizer, but a calamari steak. It had a nice taste, but the texture was a little odd and smooth. I could probably dig it if I didn't think about what it was. And for dessert: the most amazing thing in the world, a taste I had no idea existed. Flourless chocolate cake – not too sweet – and a glass of port wine. Oh. My. God.

Tomorrow I go home. My flight gets in to Dallas at 5:30. I have had a nice time but am looking forward to my cats, my own bed, and especially my Doc.

Roadtrip Day 7: All Over The Place

This morning I got up early again and went walking in Gig Harbor with Mom, Aunt Sue, and family friend Yasuko. We walked around the harbor and marina and through the downtown area, then stopped for coffee and scones. Yasuko is a bit older than Mom and Sue, and as a teenager Mom babysat her kids.

It turns out that her daughter, Christine Wada, works in Hollywood and was the costumer for one of my favorite movies, O Brother Where Art Thou. She's done costumes for a lot of movies, including a few Coen Brothers films.

We drove up to Sequim with John and Sue so Mom could meet with the plumber and get the fixtures and tub choices finalized. We walked around the property for a bit first, and it had rained earlier in the day, so everything was wet. It was cold, too! I would say between 50 and 55 degrees.

Later we ate lunch at a little cafe on the waterfront, more of a dive really. It looked like a place where old people go to sit all day and smoke cigarettes. The fish and chips were excellent, very lightly battered so not too heavy. I really and truly love malt vinegar on my fish and chips. Who needs tartar sauce?

While Mom was at the plumber's shop, the rest of us went to a few antique/junk shops to see if they might be places Mom would like to go to search for old doorknobs and other authentic house accessories. Then we got blizzards at Dairy Queen.

Note to self: Never eat fish, chips, and ice cream for the same meal. Ever. Again. You will regret it.

Traffic was awful coming back home; a bad accident had shut down the highway. We exited and tried to take back roads. John was driving mom's car and knows the ins and outs, but as it turned out, so did everyone else. It probably would have been quicker to stay on the highway.

I took a few photos at John's, of his house and the surrounding forest.









Later, we left John and Sue's as they had to pack up for their monthlong vacation at their Alaskan island cabin, and drove back to Redmond to Mike's house. I was not feeling well at all (again: fish, chips and ice cream are a bad combination) and so I pretty much laid around for the rest of the evening, reading and feeling sorry for myself.

We'll spend tomorrow with Mike. No idea what we will do.

Roadtrip Day 6: Seattle

Not a whole lot to report for today. We came out to my Uncle John's house this morning and hung out here all day, talking, having cheese and diet Pepsi on their patio, running errands. Brittney calls him "the flip off uncle" because I have a photo of me and my brothers and my mom and him on the sofa in my house on the night before my wedding, and he has a huge grin on his face and he's flipping off the camera.

Late afternoon I took Tilly and went running up and down the HUGE hill on the main road near their house. We didn't go very far, partly because there was not much of a shoulder to the road and I was afraid she would get into the street, but mostly because I don't do 20% grades very well. Texas is FLAT and that's what I'm used to!

This evening my cousin John Evan and his wife and kids came for dinner, along with family friend Yasuko, whose kids my mom used to babysit for in the early 1960s. The Richardson kids seemed to get all the energy in the family while the McCormack kids are much calmer. It took a lot out of me, to be "on" for that long. John seems a lot calmer than he used to; not as much angry energy. I think being a dad has helped him a lot.

Tomorrow we go back to the property in Sequim for Mom to meet with the plumber. She was hoping that would happen today but he needed to meet tomorrow instead. Hopefully we will also be able to take Tilly to the beach to play in the water.

I know I've only been gone six days, but I feel a little homesick for Doc and the cats and my own bed. Actually I am VERY homesick for Doc... it's really hard to not be with him for this long. I've loved spending a lot of time with my mom but I really wish he was here too.

Roadtrip Day 4: Washington State

We made it to our final destination! I cannot believe we drove 2500 miles in 3-1/2 days, especially with a dog and cat along for the ride.

Mom and I are now staying with my brother Mike in Redmond, just outside of Seattle.

Too tired to type now. Will recap in the morning.

Okay, I am now a bit more refreshed than I was when I started this post yesterday.

We had breakfast in Couer d'Alene, Idaho, with Doc's mom this morning. We ate at a lovely ritzy resort restaurant on the lake. Not that the restaurant was that ritzy, but the resort sure was. It was really great to see her, and now that she's moving to Derby, Kansas, we'll be able to visit more often.



Our drive was mainly uneventful. Eastern Washington is surprisingly plain and flat.



The Columbia Valley Gorge is somewhere in the middle, and it is quite beautiful.



Western Washington, however, is much more interesting.



We got to Mike's house in the early evening and sat out on his back porch for a little while until he got home from work. Then he took me for a ride on his new motorcycle. I cannot believe I got on the back of a bike! The last time I was on one, I was an infant in a cardboard box on the back of my dad's motorcycle in the early 1970s.



My brother's girlfriend of four years recently left him and it's like all the life has gone out of him. He won't eat, he barely responds when you talk to him, and doesn't smile. I know he'll pull through it eventually but he's in a bad place right now, and it makes me really sad that there's nothing I can do.

Tomorrow Mom and I will go to Sequim to see her new house in progress.

Roadtrip Day 3: Montana & Idaho

We are making seriously good time on this roadtrip. I think we are a full day ahead of schedule! We have driven about 650 miles each day since Friday, and are now in Couer d'Alene, Idaho.

Today's route:

90 from Sheridan, Wyoming straight on through to Couer d'Alene, Idaho. One road, 650 miles!

Montana is much more picturesque than Wyoming. It is named Big Sky Country for a good reason. It seems to be rather sparsely populated and everyone has a view of verdant hills teeming with evergreens or snow-capped mountains. The skies are enormous and blue and filled with puffy white and gray clouds.





Here is a photo of our hotel from last night, which used to be a flour mill:



I can't believe I've been getting up at 5:45 every morning since Friday. It's actually not as hard to do when you go to bed by 9:30 p.m.! First thing after waking up, I put on my shorts and hoodie and running shoes and take Tilly outside for a short jog. We've been going about a mile or so, which is not very far for someone who's supposed to be training for a marathon, but I'm on limited time and I've got a dog who probably can't go as far as I need to. Anyway, I think I'm doing good to be getting any exercise at ALL on a cross country roadtrip.

This morning I let Tilly off-leash in the hotel parking lot (it's fenced on 3 sides from the street with a nice grassy area at the back), and ran her from one side to the other at top speed for a few minutes. She can outrun me, easily, even when I sprint. She has this awesome bounding run and she'll cross diagonally in front of me as if to trip me up, and then she'll stop at the end of the parking lot and look back at me like she's laughing.



As we drove through these beautiful hills and valleys today, I wanted to stop on the roadside and let her out to just run up and down the hillsides. Too bad most of them had fences a few dozen yards back from the highway. I guess somebody owns every square inch of America.

We stopped to pee in a cute little town called Livingston, where I overheard the woman behind the store counter at the Exxon station tell a local customer "And she actually asked me, 'How safe are your hotels?' And I told her 'Honey, I'm at work and my house is unlocked, that's what kind of town this is!' And she sniffed and walked out without a word!"

We ate lunch at a Quizno's in Butte, where Tilly charmed everyone who walked past our patio table. And later in the afternoon we stopped for gas in Wallace, Idaho, a tiny town nestled along a river in a valley, that is very well kept up and apparently just held some sort of weekend festival. There were far more cars parked in the antiquey looking downtown area than could possibly belong to just the residents.



And now we're at the La Quinta in Couer d'Alene. We got a bottle of wine and had cheese, fruit, snap peas and crackers in the room for dinner.

Tomorrow morning we are having breakfast with Doc's mom, who is driving down from Sandpoint about 40 miles north of here. I'm looking forward to seeing her.

Roadtrip Day 2: Colorado & Wyoming

Today was a pretty damn boring drive. We covered the entire states of Colorado and Wyoming from south to north.

Today's route:

25 from Trinidad, Colorado to Buffalo, Wyoming (600 miles)
90 from Buffalo to Sheridan, Wyoming (30 miles)

As we were leaving Trinidad, I noticed that it has a Stargate!



That 600 mile stretch from Trinidad to Buffalo was, nearly without exception, unendingly boring.



Outside of Colorado Springs we drove past Pike's Peak, but we weren't sure exactly which one it was in the mountain range because nothing looked impressive or terribly peaky and we kind of thought it was supposed to be rather pointy. I called Doc a bit later to express my disappointment in Mr. Pike and his so-called "peak," and he said that when you're travelling across America at 25 miles a day on horseback, after going through Kansas you tend to be easily impressed.

The most interesting event of the day was the windstorm that blew through as we were standing outside the Loaf 'N Jug gas station in Casper, Wyoming (seriously, it was called the Loaf 'N Jug, how awesome is that?!), trying to get the dog to pee. The gust slammed into us and then a cloud of dirt and gravel came roaring in without warning. We ran for the car, dirt in our eyes and stinging the backs of our legs and arms. We waited until it subsided a little before getting back on the highway, but the muddy rain made it hard to see for a while.







Tonight we are staying at the Mill Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming. It is an old flour mill converted into motel rooms, very nicely decorated with Old West art, wooden furniture, track lighting, and Starbucks coffee in the room. Instead of going out for dinner, we bought cheese and crackers and fruit and snow peas at a grocery store, and looked in vain for some place to buy wine.

Tilly and Tigger are doing really well. Tigger has had some intestinal upsets in her carrier, but once you let her out to roam around the backseat, she does fine. I think the carrier makes her nervous. She loves being in the motel rooms, she just wanders a bit and then curls up on the bed and goes right to sleep.

I have some photos of the hotel but it is late, we are getting up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, and I will just post them tomorrow instead.

Morning in Colorado

I woke up at 5:50 a.m. (no, I have not been replaced with an a robot that is a morning person) and walked out of the motel room in my pajamas to take the dog outside, and it was 57 degrees. In June. This does not compute, my brain is short circuiting.

I'm really glad that I brought my hoodie with me, I'm going to have to dig it out of the trunk of the car!

Gotta go, time to pack up the car and get on the road. I'll write more tonight.

Roadtrip Day 1: Texas & New Mexico

Mom and I began our Crazy Summer Roadtrip A La Thelma And Louise But Without The Murders and Driving Off Cliffs this morning.

(I've posted my photos on Flickr.)

It's funny how your perception of how long you're spending in the car (or, I suppose, any mode of transportation) is relative to your total travel time. For instance, the 4-1/2 hour drive to Houston from Dallas seems to take absolutely forever, yet the eleven hours we spent in the car today seemed to go by fairly quickly, and I think that it's because I know we have another three or four full days still to drive. So does 1/4 of a journey always feel like 1/4 of a journey, no matter how long that journey is?

At any rate, we spent most of today in Texas. I've lived here my whole life (sigh) and I still marvel at the fact that one can drive literally all day and still be in this same damn state.

That being said, West Texas skies are amazing. So big.



Here is the route for today:

635 to 35 in Dallas.
35 to 380 in Denton.
380 to 287 in Decatur.
287 to 40 in Amarillo.
40 to 385 in Vega.
385 to 87 in Dalhart.
87 to 25 in Raton, NM.
And 25 to Trinidad, CO, which is where we are right now.

Just outside of Amarillo, we stopped at Cadillac Ranch. I have wanted to see Cadillac Ranch ever since I first heard of it years ago, and now I am very happy that I can cross this one off my Must Do Before I Die list. It seems a little less "larger than life" than I was expecting (Cadillacs 20 feet tall? Not so much), but it was still pretty cool.




Normally I really like New Mexico, but today it completely sucked. The little northeast corner that we drove through had road construction literally the entire way, and the speed limit averaged 45.

Tilly and Tigger (mom's black lab puppy and stripey cat) did amazingly well in the car. Tigger spent most of the time curled up in her litterbox on the floor behind the driver's seat, and Tilly slept on her fuzzy sheepskin dog bed on top of the luggage in the backseat. We made a lot of puppy pee stops (although Tilly was much more interested in chasing grasshoppers), and it was really nice to stop frequently just to get out and stretch.

In fact, I really like travelling without a set schedule. We don't have to be in Seattle on a particular day and we don't have motel reservations anywhere along the way. It is so much more relaxing this way.

So now we are in a motel in Trinidad, which is just inside the Colorado border. We found a nice place that has free wi-fi (woot!) and takes dogs and cats, but the tradeoff is that we are in a smoking room that smells really awfully strongly of tobacco. We were just too tired to drive any further to look for another place, though.

Sprint tells me that I have full coverage in Trinidad, but it lies. I am on stupid Roaming, which I do not use, so I cannot call anyone. Not that I particularly enjoy talking on the phone, but I did get two calls that I couldn't answer so as not to rack up hideous roaming charges.

ShinyGirl Across America

Our new web designer started at work this week. There's a lot for him to absorb but he's doing a fine job so far. I'm having to learn how to be a boss, which is kind of weird. I'm spending a lot of my time this week training him, and I'm not getting much of my own work done.

However, after tomorrow I do not have to care for a week and a half. I'm leaving on a roadtrip with my mom from Dallas to Seattle. Two women, a hyperactive labrador retriever, and an angry cat, 5 days, 2500 miles.

There was a slight change in plans last week, and now we are driving Mom's comfy Honda Accord instead of Dad's small-cab stick-shift pickup truck, with the dog in the middle and the cat carrier under the passenger's feet!

I plan to take lots of pictures, stop at weird roadside attractions, and blog from the road! Love you, laptop. :)

Paradise is exactly like...

... where you are right now, only much, much better.

I keep saying that to myself, but there would have to be a whole lot of "better" applied to Texas to make it compare with Belize.

Or at least, the parts of Belize that are fancied up for tourists.

I absolutely loved vacationing there, but in a way it makes me feel very strange and somewhat guilty. The resort that we were at was the definition of "tropical paradise," with your every need taken care of and the surroundings groomed to perfection. But just a few miles away, in Hopkins Village or any number of similar villages in "the real Belize," the poverty is heartbreaking. Families live in 100 square foot shacks made of rotting wood, corrugated tin, and palm thatch roofs. If you're lucky, your house is raised up on stilts to keep it away from the water that perpetually puddles on the ground in this rain-soaked country. The minimum wage is approximately $1 (US).

Much of the time, I really felt like a "rich white American" intruding in their country -- out of place and guilty for lounging around at a luxury resort all week. But is it a good thing that my money is flowing into their economy? Do I actually help the Belizeans by contributing to their tourism industry?

Belize: Day Eight

Today was our last day in Belize, and it doesn't really count because it's a travel day. We didn't do a whole lot else.

After breakfast (Doc with a special-order omelette and a parting glass of grapefruit juice, me with my usual fruit and cheese), we settled our bill at the front desk, left an envelope with gratuities for the entire staff as well as extra for a few specific people, and retrieved our dive equipment from the dive shop. Luckily none of our stuff was taken in the theft a few days ago (Giovanni's regulator was stolen, along with someone else's BCD and I think also a wetsuit or two).

We packed as best we could, resigning ourselves to the fact that we'd have two suitcases full of damp musty-smelling clothes. We had to be out of our room by 11 a.m., check-out time, but our van to the airport wasn't leaving until 1 p.m., so we brought our luggage down to the lobby and sat with Doug, Nish, Kurt, and Megan until their van left at 12. We found out that, since we didn't arrive until dinnertime on our first day, our lunch meal was included on our last day. So we went ahead and ordered lunch, and by the time we were done, it was time to leave. We said our goodbyes to the staff, loaded into the van with Lorenzo, and headed for Dangriga.

Our puddlejumper at Dangriga was about 3o minutes late arriving, which was fine since we had plenty of time before our connecting flight. We sat in the Dangriga airport and read the local papers, which were interesting in that they contained little hard news and some soft core pornography in the guise of a "love" column.

In Belize City, we visited the duty-free shops, and I'm still not certain exactly how they work or what they're for -- something to do with evading taxes, I think. All I know is you could buy three things: alcohol, cigarettes, or perfume. And actually, it turns out that the alcohol they were selling was about 1/2 to 1/3 of the price you would pay here in the States. Doc and I got a liter of pomegranate liqueur and a liter of Bailey's Irish Cream, just for grins. The weird thing about the duty free shops here (and maybe this is standard operating procedure everywhere, I don't know) is that they couldn't actually hand over the alcohol that we bought. They said that they had to bring it to us on the plane, which actually meant that once we walked out the gate door onto the tarmac, they had our purchases on a little card table and we just matched up receipts with the liquor guards.

Apparently a big bag of alcohol does not count against your 2-carryon limit.

We landed in Houston after an uneventful flight, stood in long uneventful lines for immigration and customs, and picked up our luggage, which were some of the first bags out onto the carousel (this NEVER happens!) I don't recall what the international arrivals areas of other airports look like (I don't think I've been in one in 10 years), but the Houston airport's arrival area was enormous and covered in lots of interesting art. The baggage claim area itself had maybe 12 huge carousels, each of which was topped with large white plastic suitcases that lit up from within. I think that the presence of all the art was meant to create a good first impression of America on foreign travellers.

We said our goodbyes and caught shuttles out to the parking lots where we'd left our cars, paid our giant parking bills, and headed for home. It was pouring down rain in Houston, and, as it turns out, about halfway north to Dallas too. Doc and I decided to try to drive straight on through to home, even though we didn't get out of the airport until almost 10 p.m. I was tired but knew that this drive was going to suck, and did not want to prolong the pain by putting it off until tomorrow. Doc played iPod DJ on the car radio and I did my best to stay awake, drinking root beer, stopping to pee and stretch every 30-45 minutes, and singing along to the extremely upbeat songs he selected for me. It stopped raining halfway to Dallas, but then the thick fog kicked in – and it was thicker than any fog I've ever driven in. I would say that visibility was probably less than 100 feet, which is kind of scary when you're going 60 miles per hour down a dark highway. The adrenaline kept me awake, and we made it safely home shortly before 2 a.m. We said hi to Mom, brought our suitcases inside, and crashed.

Belize: Day Seven

This morning we left at 7:30 for a full-day Mayan history tour of two major temple complexes, Xunantunich and Cahal Pech. Both sites are near the Guatemalan border, over 2 hours away. Something like 30 people signed up for this tour, so we had to pile into three vans. We didn't time it right, and all the vans were nearly full by the time we got to the loading area. Doug and Nish climbed into one of the vans, and Kat and Brett followed us to one of the others. There was room for all four of us, but they spied Tom sitting in the front seat and they turned and hauled ass towards the third van, where there was room for only two. So Doc and I lost the battle and had to take another Tom bullet for the team.

Surprisingly, Tom made little comment the entire trip, although I feared we were off to a bad start when he asked Lorenzo, the driver, as soon we got on the highway, “So, what kind of engine you got in here?”

The morning was very misty with lots of thick white low clouds, especially as we headed into the hills in Central Belize. We saw at least a dozen rainbows, very vivid and close to us. Some of them ended right in the roadway directly ahead of us. Lorenzo told us that in Belize, rather than finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, legend has it that you'll find a boa constrictor.

We stopped at a citrus factory along the way (and by "stopped" I mean "pulled over to the side of the road for 2 minutes so we could look out the van windows") and a tourist trap gift shop that I guess the resort has some sort of affiliation with. It almost felt expected that we buy something. They did have some interesting things, so I bought myself a necklace – a simple iridescent green cylinder on a leather cord – and a few small gifts for people. The prices were fair, though overpriced compared to other places, I discovered later.

To get to Xunantunich, we crossed the Mopan River via hand-cranked ferry, which prominently featured guards sporting automatic rifles. This, apparently, is because the site is very close to the Guatemalan border, and the two countries historically have been embroiled in a nasty border dispute. Guatemala feels that large chunks of Belize is actually their land, dating back to when Belize was a British colony known as British Honduras. I wonder how the Belizean military men feel about protecting stupid white tourists like us.

Xunantunich, which means "Stone Maiden" in Mayan, is a complex of 6 plazas and more than 20 buildings and temples. We climbed to the top of El Castillo, the second tallest structure in Belize. From the top we could see Guatemala. The carved friezes around the sides of El Castillo are actually made of fiberglass; the original friezes are buried about a meter behind them, and not exposed to prevent erosion and defacement. While we were at the top, it began to rain pretty hard, and the slippery stone steps seemed much narrower on the way down than on the way up. We were very worried about falling to a painful head-bashing death. We also visited one of the ball courts, where the ancient Mayans played a game with an 8 pound rubber ball. The losing team was killed, while the winning team was sacrificed (there is a difference). It was an honor to be chosen for the game, which was watched by the elite and royalty.

The second site, Cahal Pech or "City of Ticks", was so named because the archaeological site was a cow pasture when it was originally discovered in the 1950s. Parts of this site were much older than Xunantunich, by about 1200 years. The temples were not as high and did not have as grand a view, but were still very interesting.

The drive back to Hamanasi seemed much longer than the drive to the temples this morning. I guess that's always how it goes, though. Once we got back, we rested in our room for a little while, then went to the bar and hung out with our friends before dinner. Tonight, each of the three couples ate dinner at our own little two-top tables. The menu tonight was "manatee bread" (which we had a lot of fun joking about -- does it contain real manatee?!), cream of garlic soup, cheese-stuffed chicken with sweet guava glaze, and key lime pie with coffee. The manatee bread was delicious: a soft wheat bread stuffed with cheese and bacon (but wait, was it manatee bacon?! Or manatee jerky?!), and named (so the waitress said) because the large unsliced loaf was shaped like a manatee.

After dinner, we went to Nish and Doug’s room for a while to chat and have drinks. Kat and Brett said they'd join us a little later, but Kathryn later said that they fell asleep almost immediately after dinner and woke up in the morning wearing the same clothes they'd had on the night before. We had a nice time on our last night, talking with Nish and Doug, Kurt and Meegan, and a new couple named Dennis and Melissa. I had one rum and coke, which was about all I could take after a week of having one or two drinks every single day, and we eventually called it a night and went to bed.

[click here for pictures]

Belize: Day Six

This morning I did not have any adventures planned, yet I got up early anyway. This whole trip I have been getting up before 8 a.m., on my own. I suppose it's probably largely due to the fact that we have been going to sleep somewhat early (11 p.m. or so).

Doc went diving in the morning, along with Brett, Kurt, and Megan. I think that he's really enjoying it. The divemasters have cancelled the trips to Blue Hole and Glover's Reef, so all the divers are just staying on the barrier reef this week, which I guess is still probably pretty damn cool. I puttered around this morning taking pictures, and then took the laptop to the lobby so I could upload some of my photos to flickr.

Even though I technically have an internet connection while here, I haven't really been using it as much as I thought I would have. I mean, I know I've mentioned getting online for three or four days now, but when you compare it to my normal online schedule (averaging about 70 hours per week, I would say, between work and home), it's nothing. The connection is slower than molasses in January, but I don't know that that is necessarily a factor. I have not missed TV at all, I have not once had the urge to make a phone call, and I also haven't wanted to listen to any music on my iPod. It's weird how my nearly-total disconnect from the fast-paced hurry hurry world of my normal life, where I constantly attempt to absorb as much audiovisual information as possible, happened so quickly and easily.

Maybe that means that when the apocalypse comes, I will survive because I adapt well, and society will value me because I have skills that don't require electricity.

Speaking of activities that don't require electricity, later in the morning I sat in a beach chair in the shade of a palm tree and watched for Doc coming home from sea.

Once he arrived safely back on land, we ate lunch (I had a mini pizza with bacon... WAY too much bacon, and y'all know about how much bacon it would have to be for me to say something like that).

At 2 p.m. we hopped in a van and drove several miles out to a spot on the Sittee River, where we disembarked and got into canoes and kayaks. The kayaks were not the kind where you basically enclose your lower half inside the boat, and if you tip over you'd better hope you can right yourself quickly; these much less scary "sit-on-top" kayaks were very flat plastic boats with flat areas to sit on, seat backs to hold you in place, and little grooves for your feet. The canoes looked much safer, but we were told that the kayaks, despite their smallness and flatness, were actually more stable. So Doc and I decided to be adventurous and climbed into a blue kayak.

Which immediately started to fill with water. We were both horrorstricken by how fucking enormous we must be that we could sink a kayak between the two of us. We were both on the verge of scrambling back out onto the dock, but they told us that they were actually SUPPOSED to partially fill with water -- that's just how these kayaks worked. We were not entirely convinced, because there didn't seem like there was much kayak to fill before the damn boat was completely underwater. But we decided to give it a go. So we paddled down the river, with a few inches of dirty parasite-filled tropical river water sloshing around our legs, feet, and unmentionables.

Not that I was paranoid about, you know, parasites and my nether regions. Not at all.

We paddled down a short stretch of river, shaded by graceful tall trees and under a nice little bridge that I was almost too tall to fit under -- Doc paddling for power, and me using mine to steer. And then we emerged onto a very large pond, in full tropical sunlight. The temperature zoomed up into the high 90s, and I started to sweat. As far as we could see down the river, there was no shade at all. I began to think that this was all a Very Bad Idea; it was miserably hot and still and we only had a little bit of water between the two of us, and I had no clue how far we had to go before we reached the pickup site.

I began having flashbacks to the day that we canoed down the Brazos river for six hours in 100-plus degree heat, with only one gallon of water for four people (us plus Ginger and Kathryn, I think). The river was so low that we had to walk our canoes through the shallows for much of the time, and poor Doc had a screamer of a cluster headache and was getting badly sunburnt.

So I was having all these visceral memories of the Canoe Trip From Hell, and my mood plunged. I wanted to get this stupid adventure over with as quickly as possible, and so I attempted to paddle more quickly so we could get ahead of the pack and zoom on ahead. Doc was much calmer (probably actually enjoying himself!) and kept telling me that I didn't need to paddle so quickly, or at all, and basically to just stop and look around a little. I kept thinking, snakes, mosquitos, heat, sunburn, headache; I was miserable.

Then, around the next bend, we saw it: a rain squall coming up the river, headed right for us! It was wonderful. We got soaking wet, and the temperature dropped. My mood immediately improved. I began to slow my frantic paddling and enjoy looking at the huge orange iguanas in the trees and on the banks, the turtles, birds, and various other wildlife. Kathryn even saw a crocodile. Luckily I did not, nor did I see any water snakes.

After about two hours, we reached a little dock near where the river emptied into the Caribbean Sea, and we hauled our canoes up to the trailer, got into the van, and went back to Hamanasi.

At dinner, I wasn't feeling all that well and I couldn’t eat much. I didn't even want dessert. This may have been partly due to me feeling extremely uncomfortable because our dinner group had expanded at the last minute to something like 14 people, and the Hamanasi staff was balking at putting together a table that big when we hadn't let them know ahead of time (and rightly so), and members of our party began moving tables around on their own and insisting that Doc and I not eat dinner by ourselves, which we were attempting to do in an attempt to alleviate the clusterfuck. After nearly a week of social interaction, I also felt like my supply of social energy was running dangerously low at this point. (I am, after all, an introvert and I need lots of alone time.)

Our group had made plans to go out to a little bar in Hopkins Village called King Kassava, to have drinks and hang out with some of the Hamanasi staff and village locals, and up to this point I had planned to go, even though I wasn't necessarily looking forward to it (me + strangers + alcohol = much awkwardness on my part). However, I realized during dinner that I was becoming more and more anxious about the prospect of going, and after a discussion with Doc, who understood that I was feeling anxious and graciously agreed to do whatever I wanted to do, I told everyone that I wasn't feeling well and had used up all my social energy for the week. Of course there were protests ("we'll come back as early as the earliest person wants to come back!" -- it never works that way, and I said so) but I held my ground. We came back to the room and watched a movie instead.

I think I made the right decision. Kathryn told me later that I would definitely have been uncomfortable at King Kassava -- she very much felt like an outsider there, and if she did, I certainly would have, even more so.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I'm developing an anxiety disorder. I often am terrified at the prospect of going to places where there will be people I don't know, especially when I don't know how or if I'll be able to escape.

Intro to tropical paradise

I am writing this while sitting on the balcony patio of my spacious condo-like beachfront cabana room at Hamanasi Resort in Belize. I’m about 100 feet from the Caribbean Sea, whose waves produce a sound so soothing that it’s caused me to fall asleep on the beach on two separate occasions.

It's really quite wonderful here. The temperature has been hovering between about 75 and 90, with 100% humidity, which somehow doesn't seem as oppressive in a tropical location as it does back at home. The ocean breezes cool everything down. I've been wearing my swimsuit all week, just in case I want to go in the water.

So far I've been snorkeling and Doc has been diving twice, and we did a very strenuous hike up a mountain yesterday. We're having a great time with our friends, and have even made some new ones.

I am writing down our adventures in detail, which I will edit and post when I return to reality in a few days, and I'll also post my photos to Flickr.

Belize: Day Four

I decided to go snorkeling again this morning, while Doc, Kat, and Brett went diving along with Doug and Nish. The boat ride over was annoying because I ended up sitting next to Tom, while the rest of Tom’s party sat on the other side of the boat. No sooner had he sat down then he immediately turned to me and launched into a story about some friend of his and volcanic sequences and moss and people spending thousands on hotel rooms and the geology bonehead of the year award. Seriously. What the fuck?! And he told the story as if I should know the people he was talking about! I tuned out and just made little “hmm” noises every few minutes or gave vague smiles, while trying to show as little interest as possible. Thank god I had my sunglasses on. When it seemed like his story was possibly winding down (or maybe that was me simply giving up), I gave a final smile and turned to Giovanni, the dive/snorkel master sitting on the other side of me, and began a conversation with him instead. Rude, maybe, but it seems apparent that Tom does not understand social cues such as obvious boredom and discomfort in his “victims.”

The boat dropped us off on South Water Caye and we walked around to the other side of the island. Tom was quite eager to get in the water, so he walked on ahead of the rest of us. The sad part is, the rest of his family was making fun of him behind his back, rolling their eyes and making snide comments. I almost felt sorry for him. At one point he turned around and said (and I quote) “Everyone, please note the sand underneath your feet. Now, you’ll notice that this sand is a slightly finer grade than the sand back on the mainland. This is because…” and he launched into a tour-guide style geologic monologue about the makeup of the sand on the island.

The snorkeling was much better today than it was on Sunday. This may be partially due to the fact that I had brought a bottle of defogger with me, and I could actually see through my mask. My feet were still sore and raw from where the fins rubbed them on Sunday’s trip, but I went ahead and put them on anyway and just gritted my teeth through the pain. Next time I’ll know to bring my diving boots.

We stayed out in the water for quite awhile today, and everything on the reef was crisp, sharp, and colorful. I saw many different kinds of coral – brain coral, fan coral, cactus coral (I don’t know the actual names of most of them, I’m just describing what they look like). I saw a barracuda, a spotted eagle ray, a lobster, tons of fish including blue tangs, yellow parrotfish, scorpionfish (which look like giant mottled ugly lumps of coral until they move), sergeant majors, buttonsnappers, and so many others in all different colors.

It started to rain so we came back to shore (which was good because I’d forgotten to put a new motion sickness medication patch on this morning, and I had just begun to feel a bit queasy) and walked back to the marine biology students' station (International Zoological Expedition) near the dock. The rain really started in once we got back and didn’t let up for probably 30 minutes. The divers had come back already and were having grapefruit juice and cookies. They went back out in the rain, but we were all so cold standing on IZE's porch and the rain kept coming down, that we decided not to go back out again. Eventually we walked back to the other side of the island to fetch our gear, and when Tom realized we weren’t going to snorkel again, he pulled a full-on three-year-old temper tantrum. I think he was joking, but I’m not certain. He made blubbering noises and kept pointing at the ocean. Seriously.

On the boat ride back, one of the Canadian women sat next to me before Tom could and whispered, “I’ll protect you this time.” She told me “He’s not from MY side of the family.” Tom announced to the boat captain before we started back that he'd be wanting to stop a few times to videotape the surroundings and dictate to himself into his camera. At least I didn’t have to sit next to him. Poor Giovanni got the brunt of it, and shortly after we started back, he moved over to my side of the boat instead.

The boat had a pretty nice sound system, and the captain and dive masters had an iPod plugged in, playing really loud reggae the whole way back. I guess we were the party boat. We stopped at Bird Island, where all the giant pterodactyl-looking frigate birds and brown- and red-footed boobies roosted. It is a tiny island but it’s completely overgrown with trees and vegetation, and hundreds of birds circle overhead and roost in the trees along the shore.

Back on the mainland, I met Doc (who had come back on the other boat) at the pool, took a shower, then went to lunch. We ate with a fellow diver from a nearby resort, Carol, and her friend Sylvia, a little old lady from Italy, who thought that the bouillabase in Belize sucked. Sylvia kept reaching over and taking food off my plate. It was a very strange lunch.

I took a nap for most of the afternoon, and woke up shortly before we were due to eat dinner (tonight: house salad and a beef “fajita” – barely seasoned beef wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise – with coconut rice, and fruit crumble cheesecake and coffee. Oh, and lots of wine!). We had a lot of fun at dinner, talking and laughing about all sorts of things, including how Doc and Brett fooled the dive masters into thinking that they were afraid of manatees... which led to ideas for a TV show called "Humanatee" about half man/half manatee Jason Seaworthy and his adventures.

After dinner we played Trivial Pursuit in the lobby, boys against girls. The boys won by the skin of their teeth.

Belize: Day Five

We didn’t sign up for any adventures today, so we slept in (which was only 7 a.m. for Doc and 8 a.m. for me). After breakfast of pineapple, cheese, and yogurt, Kathryn and I did some yoga out on the end of the boat dock. Later in the morning I took the laptop into the lobby of the main house, got hooked up to the internet, and e-mailed Mom to see what time her flight left on Sunday so we could be sure to be home in time to take her to the airport, in case we were too tired to drive back to Dallas on Saturday night. I chatted for a bit online with Brittney, who told me that Dallas is covered in ice and basically shut down today. I was doubly glad now that we had decided to drive to Houston and fly from there, because if we'd tried to reschedule our flight out of Dallas we may never have made it to Belize.

After lunch (a much-too-highly seasoned cheeseburger and rather tasty french fries) I took my book and a towel down to the beach and laid in the sun for a little while. I got an hour or two of reading in, and fell asleep to boot. Luckily I'd coated myself in both sunscreen and bug spray, so I wasn't any the worse for wear. Doc worked for a little while on the laptop and spent some time organizing his photography that he’d taken this morning and the previous day. Taz, the fluffy striped beachcat, visited me while I was sleeping and gave himself a good bath. Doc got a photo of him licking his butt.

I'm not entirely sure what we did the rest of the afternoon and evening, as I did not take notes right away. I think we basically just relaxed and did as little as possible all day. That's kind of what vacation is for, I suppose.

Belize: Day Three

We rose early again this morning, had a light breakfast of pineapple, grapefruit, papaya, and toast, and met in the main house at 8 a.m. to start our Mayflower Rainforest hike. The intensity level was advertised as “rigorous,” but they also had said that the black bean soup the night before would be spicy, and it had no heat whatsoever. Based on that, we figured that they wanted to weed out the people who couldn't handle a little uphill walk.

Wrong! They were trying to weed out everyone. This hike was one of the most difficult physical activities that I can remember doing. It was worth it in the end though.

We drove in vans out to the Mayflower Rainforest national park, and began our hike up to 750 feet above sea level. The first part was easygoing enough, mostly flat with a few moderate inclines and downhills, very muddy. Golden and Lorenzo, our guides, pointed out interesting plants and animals along the way. We saw a cacao bean tree, a rubber tree, philodendrons, cohune palms (where we get hearts of palm from, and I learned that it involves cutting down the entire tree to get it, so I don’t think I’ll be eating those again), coconut palms, bastard palms (covered in needle sharp spikes that hurt like hell, and the only way to soothe the pain is to cut down the palm to get at the liquid inside), tourist trees (whose bark is reddish and peeling like a bad sunburn), leafcutter ants, soldier ants, toucans, hummingbirds, and a 6’ long black rat snake — I spotted it myself on the way back down the mountain, shrieked like a little girl and hauled ass back towards the visitor center. Nish volunteered to eat a termite from a mound in the fork of a tree. She said it tasted like carrots or jicama.

After 15 minutes or so of hiking this moderate trail, the difficult part began. The path was steep — about a 75 degree incline in parts — and slick with wet leaves, wet roots, wet rocks, and lots of red mud. It was tough going. We had to grab roots and rocks to pull ourselves along, and in several places, we used knotted ropes tied to trees to haul ourselves upward. And this trail seemed to never end. I was panting and heaving and sweating in the 90-degree heat with 100% humidity (hello, rainforest!). I had to stop every 15 uphill feet or so to catch my breath. The hikers had split into two groups by this point, and most of our group seemed to be having similar troubles with exhaustion, although I think I was having a more difficult time than anyone. The other group seemed to be in much better shape, as they got to the top a lot faster.

About halfway up we reached a scenic viewpoint, Antelope Falls, which was only semi-interesting – a small stream pouring through big chunky granite boulders. We stopped for a drink of water and a bit of a rest here. I didn’t realize we were only halfway up. If I’d known, I might have elected not to go any further because I was so hot and sweaty and my leg muscles were twitching with exhaustion.

The remainder of the uphill trail was the worst part — extremely steep (those 75 degree inclines I was talking about) and treacherous with mud and steep drop-offs. In places, the trail was less than a foot wide before it went nearly straight downhill into the ravine. After a very difficult journey, we made it to the top, where we were rewarded with a gorgeous natural pool at the base of a waterfall. It was about 20 feet in diameter, and 20 feet deep. The water was very cold, maybe 65 degrees or so. We all stripped to our bathing suits and (eventually) took the plunge. Going in gradually was just not going to work – it was an all or nothing situation!

I got bitten by what I think are sand flies on both hips, probably while sitting on a rock in my bathing suit deciding if I really wanted to plunge into this water. I am really glad I did. It was incredibly refreshing after that hot muddy sweat-soaked hike. We swam around in the pool for a while and sat on a rock ledge under the falls themselves, pouring down cold and hard on our heads.

Eventually we had to put our sweaty clothes back on and go all the way back down the trail, which was almost as difficult as going up. The danger of slipping and falling down the trail or into the ravine seemed much greater while going down. We all tried to be careful but I think we were so tired and our legs were kind of like jelly by this point, that most of us bit it at some point. Doc twisted his ankle and whacked his forearm against a rock hard enough to form a knot. I thought he was going to go off the edge so I dove for his leg and grabbed on tight, while Nish dove for me and grabbed my legs. He caught himself in plenty of time but I was really frightened that I might lose him to the ravine. I slipped a few times, landing on my right wrist and whacking my tailbone on a rock. What impressed me was how easily our group worked together coming down, alerting each other to slippery spots and helping each other along the way.

The wildcard in this whole vacation turned out to be another guest who was with a large wedding party of Canadians. The Canadians were nice enough, and we couldn't figure out why they'd invited Tom on their vacation because they seemed like they were actively trying to avoid him the whole week. Tom looked like Stephen King in a fishing hat, and he took every available opportunity to inject his knowledge of geology into every situation, whether it was appropriate or not (it usually wasn’t). His wife seemed very meek, and I only heard her speak two or three words the entire week. She also seemed to be doing her best to avoid him. He usually prefaced his lengthy monologues with “Well, you know, in Manitoba…” While we were at the pool at the top of the mountain, I glanced over to the bank and saw Tom COMPLETELY NAKED from behind, shorts around his knees, digging in his bag for his swim trunks. I feel even worse for poor Doc, who was standing on the other side of him and happened to glance back at that crucial moment. On the way down the mountain, Tom wound up at the back of the line with our rear guide, Lorenzo, who probably wanted to pull his own eardrums out of his head by the time the day was over.

When we arrived back at the visitor center at the bottom of the mountain, the other group of hikers (who were mostly the Canadians) had been waiting on us for 40 minutes – and they were hungry and pissed. It seems that Lorenzo had the keys to the van containing the lunch cooler. They gave us some pretty dirty looks, but frankly, since they stuck us with Tom at the back of the line, I had no sympathy for them. Lunch was delicious tuna salad sandwiches, roasted rosemary potatoes, grapefruit juice, water, and a wonderful little treat: a mini Snickers bar in each lunch box. It was hot and we were filthy, but I was so hungry I did not care that we were eating while sitting on a dirty concrete floor with flies buzzing all around. The air conditioning in the vans on the way back to Hamanasi was one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

When we got back to Hamanasi, Doc had developed a mildly nasty cluster headache so he napped while I joined the others poolside for a drink and chatting. Later we met for dinner (tomato/mozzarella salad and shrimp pasta salad, strawberry ice cream, pinot noir,