Of Course, the Space IS Free for WWI Vets

I found this little memorial walking along San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland. I know it’s a little hard to tell what it is, partly because I forgot my camera and had to take this photo with my crummy cell phone, and partly because it’s a sad little thing that you have to get very close to to identify.

This monument turns out to be a memorial to Oakland residents killed in World War I. In the town fathers’ defense, it was dedicated in 1921, when it’s very likely that this plot of land was not yet a parking lot. (Or located in a slum.) But now it is, and the obelisk has to be fenced off from the rest of the parking places so no one will hit it.

Is this really the best we can do?

What Just Happened Here

Nothing much; yesterday’s posting was just me doodling around, trying to write down some of my memories from a long trip I took to China in 1992. For some reason, lately I’ve been thinking not just of things that happened while I was there, but of the people I met as well.

China in 1992 was not a destination for everyone. You didn’t just find yourself there because, say, your Eurorail pass allowed you a few days at no extra charge. Most of the Westerners I met had been driven there by fairly powerful forces, and just about all of us could be divided into those who were looking for something, and those who were escaping something. Gunther was a seeker. He was quite a bit older than I was (exactly the age I am now, as a matter of fact), and at that point in my life, I was not as receptive to his new-age spirituality as I might be now.

Okay, actually, I still think the whole “hot stomach” thing is a little weird. But I did like the guy, and his words of advice on dealing with frustrating situations you have little hope of changing have stuck with me all these years.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the photo that ran yesterday is an actual photo of Gunther. He and I and a number of other backpackers I was traveling with at the time had just gone for a camel ride, and we were now playing on the enormous sand dunes that exist on the outskirts of Dunhuang.

Funny, I remembered him as being bigger.

Once Upon a Time in Gansu Province

Gunther is a vegetarian, and I wonder if that explains why he is in China and not at home in Germany. When I ask, however, he tells me he’s here among the sand dunes in Dunhuang to learn about traditional Chinese medicine.

Gunther tells me a lot of things; for a guy who is not speaking his native language, he talks a lot. Some of his stories are strange, like the one about the time he broke the veggie faith, ate some pork, and immediately became afflicted with what he calls “hot stomach.” That meal ended when Gunther found himself compelled to leave the table and run into the nearby hills, stripping off clothing as he went, “because I had taken on the characteristics of the pig I’d just eaten.”

Our conversation turns from food woes to the ways traveling in China can try your patience. I ask how he copes with common frustrations like being overcharged, or lied to by ticket vendors.

“In those situations," he says, "You can let it go without saying anything, and then you have nothing.” I nod, thinking of the times when nothing is exactly what I had to show for whole afternoons spent at train stations.

“Or, you can make a scene and try to get your way. But you’ll probably still have nothing." He pauses.

“And now, you’re angry.”

Can I Buy You a Sugar Coma?

The chocolate fountain was a serendipitous find, but it wasn’t the chocolate we’d come to Las Vegas for. We’d come to Las Vegas for chocolate from Max Brenner.

Max Brenner, in fact, is probably the only force that could get a shade-loving creature such as myself to the desert in August. I would not have picked a mid-summer date to launch a chocolate store in Sin City, but Max did, so off we went.

The Las Vegas Max Brenner is only the third such store in the United States, the other two being in New York and Philadelphia. We were so excited to have one opening in our own time zone that we got there the a day early, and were in line as the store opened the next morning.

The American store is different from, but just as good as the ones we remembered in Australia. The Las Vegas store had savory food on the menu, but vacations are too short for that. In spite of it being before noon, we had a chocolate peanut butter crepe, and hot chocolate, followed by the most intense sugar rush we’d had in years. We had to do a few laps around the Caesar Forum shops to walk it off.

The next night, we went to see Max after dinner and had magic drinks. One had Chambord and liquid chocolate straight out of a spigot as its active ingredients, and the other was a white Russian made using melted white chocolate instead of cream.

To our great excitement, Max himself was there that night, celebrating his opening by ordering dessert-drink shots for the house. He also recognized Pipi and me from the day before, and sent a plate of chocolate truffles to our table. This was, of course, the very last thing we needed that evening, having barely recalibrated our blood-sugar levels from the day before. But how could we resist? I’ve never been the kind of person who receives drinks and treats from men across the room. But in the fantasy land that is Las Vegas, chocolate runs in the taps and I am that kind of woman.

Dream Come True? Or Just a Dream?

Here’s a good example of the kind of surreal thing that seems normal in Las Vegas. It’s a two-story high fountain running three different kinds of liquid chocolate, all encased in glass. Why? Who knows. Probably because they can. (Found outside a candy store in the Monte Carlo casino.)

A Break With Reality

We were in Las Vegas. Never mind where, because the weekend was such a blur of flashing lights, shimmering heat, and synthesized slot-machine noises that I can’t always remember what events took place where. (And I’m not exactly trying to recall something that happened in my childhood. This was less than a month ago.)

I think we were at the Bellagio Casino. It was somewhere between New York, New York, where we’d picked up some theater tickets, and the Mirage, where we wanted to see the tigers. We were attempting to get from the South Strip to the Mid-Strip without taking a cab and without dying of the heat. (The TV news said it was 106 that day, though Pipi talked to a local woman who said that the news lies all the time and that her car thermometer read 115. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a complainer, so I believe it.)

At the probably-Bellagio, we passed through a courtyard full of fanciful plants. Some were clearly real, like the palm trees that shaded the area. Some, like the giant wooden mushrooms labeled “fungus humungous,” were obviously pretend.

But a lot of the shrubbery fell somewhere in between. In the middle of the space, for example, there was a large bed full of what looked like very short sunflowers. Each one was exactly the same shape and barely a foot tall. They were growing (if that’s the right word) through greenery so thick I couldn’t see the ground they were planted in. They looked live enough, but each flower was so uniform, and the roots seemed so deliberately hidden, that I’m still not sure if I was looking at a real field of bonsai sunflowers or an elaborate hoax fashioned from trimmed, store-bought stems.

But Vegas is kind of like that. It strips you of your ability to tell fact from fiction. (Also inside from outside, male from female, and appropriate from inappropriate. It’s perhaps the least binary place I’ve ever been.)

New Passport

I received a puzzling, official-looking envelope in the mail today. In it, to my surprise, was my new passport. I’d renewed it long enough ago that it wasn’t at the front of my mind, but not so long ago that I’d begun to worry about it.

I’ll miss my old passport, which had some really cool stamps (Mongolia!), not to mention a very fresh-looking photo of me taken 10 years ago. But the new passport appears to be made a little more durably, and has some interesting new design features. The frontispiece has a quote from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a facing page reproduces the preamble to the constitution, for the benefit of citizens who didn’t commit it to memory watching Saturday-morning television as children. Later pages have watermarks including patriotic quotes from all the usual suspects and some I didn’t see coming, like the Mohawk Thanksgiving address.

Best of all, the last page notes that, “This document contains sensitive electronics.” I’ve been chipped! Knowing this makes allows me to work up a good head of liberal paranoia while still feeling like I’ve got the latest gadget everyone’s talking about, a real Bay Area perfecta.

My new photo’s not great. I think I look a little haggard (especially compared to my old passport picture). But doesn’t everyone look a little rough after an international flight? I expect to breeze through customs for the next decade.

Why Did the Chicken Cross The Road? Maybe to Get to Kragen.

Have you ever seen a chicken trip over a spark plug? Neither had I until this morning’s walk through the Temescal neighborhood. I was on a residential street and I startled two hens pecking at something on the sidewalk. They got flustered, as chickens will, and went careening into a driveway. That’s where one of them ran right over the car part that someone left lying on the asphalt. She squawked and flailed and seemed to remember in mid-air that she could sort of fly, so she flapped once or twice and tried to look like she’d meant to do that. It was funny, and strange, but just par for the course in this green, gritty city where people practice both animal husbandry and car maintenance in their front yards.

Now That You Mention it, I Am a Little Obsessed With the ’80s

I have always believed that all blogs are equal, but that some are more equal than others. If that doesn’t sound like an entirely original thought on my part, I can’t help it; I just write like George Orwell.

No, I do; it’s official. The website I Write Like told me so. I gave it a couple of hundred words that I wrote for the Dallas Morning News on Mongolia, and it diagnosed me as sounding like the Animal Farm writer. I can live with this. I liked Animal Farm, loved the language in 1984, and have to admire a guy who has been down and out in both Paris and London.

So who do you write like? Try it out and see for yourself.

I’m Not Alone

Here’s an interesting article about another compulsive person walking all the streets in a Bay Area city. This guy walked every street in San Francisco, which has 1,200 miles of road, over the course of seven years.

The mileage of San Francisco’s streets surprised me, because I thought I’d read that Oakland, which covers a much larger geographical area than San Francisco, has only 800 miles of road. Oakland is much less dense than San Francisco, however, with streets less tightly packed together, so that probably explains it.

Interestingly, this man employed a trick I’ve heard from other walkers, which is to tackle bad neighborhoods in bad weather. Apparently thugs don’t like to get wet or cold.

Mission Accomplished

Fueled by a steady diet of Tim Tams and adrenaline (Why did I think June had 31 days? Why did I not realize my mistake until June 30?), I managed to get my article on Alice Springs, Australia submitted to Curve Magazine on time. This is a relief. If all goes well, look for it on a newsstand near you in October of this year.

Separated at Birth?

Somebody once told me, or maybe I read it, or maybe I made it up completely, but in any case, I used to believe that Hong Kong had the largest concentration of Rolls Royces in the world.

I visited Hong Kong in 1989, not long after I learned (or imagined) this statistic. I wasn’t there long enough to confirm anything, but I did notice an awful lot of the luxury cars around, far more than I’d ever seen in my life up to that point.

I wouldn’t have guessed that slightly downtrodden North Oakland had anything in common with the capitalist theme park that was Hong Kong back in the day, but it does: The neighborhood also has an anomalous number of Rolls Royces. Last week I saw two in one day, one under a tarp, and one cruising the streets. That’s at least one more Rolls Royce than I had previously ever seen in one day in any part of Oakland.

Coincidence? Well, obviously, but it’s always interesting to discover the odd things that radically different destinations can have in common.

On the Not-So-High Seas

One other interesting thing about North Oakland, which is separated from the San Francisco Bay by the city of Emeryville, is that a large number of residents seem to own boats. I don’t know if there are really more watercraft here than in other parts of the city. It could be that the boats, usually parked in driveways, are just more visible for some reason. In any case this landlocked neighborhood seems to have an unusually strong nautical bent.

Discovering North Oakland

I’m still working on my walking project. I’m in north Oakland right now. Usually when I mention this, the person I’m talking to will ask what the neighborhood is like, although I think what they really want to ask is if I feel safe there.

The safety question is easy enough. The simple answer is yes. If I were part of a gang, or a sex worker, or there to buy drugs, I’d probably feel differently, but my experience so far has reminded me of west Oakland: I leave trouble alone and it ignores me, too. (Of course, I keep my eyes open and my cell phone handy.)

As for what the neighborhood’s like, that’s harder to put into words. It’s not the city’s prettiest enclave. It has a few Victorians but most of the houses are boxy little post-war bungalows. There are some abandoned houses, and for some reason, there’s more litter than in any other part of the city I’ve seen yet.

But it’s far from bleak. There are pocket parks, and community gardens, and chalked hop-scotch courts on the sidewalks—all signs that people aren’t locked in their houses.

So what’s it like? Kind of like this photo, which shows a tiny patch of flowers that someone planted and then made a protective fence around at the base of a no-parking sign: kind of rough and gritty, but not without surprise little slivers of beauty.

R.I.P. Erik Fitzpatrick

Here’s something interesting that I found recently in Oakland, where we’ve raised the impromptu street shrine to an art form. Anyone can put together a soggy collection of flowers and teddy bears for a fallen comrade. In the East Bay, we do it in style. This is one of the more original offerings I’ve ever seen.

This shrine is on MacArthur Boulevard, the commercial strip nearest my house, implying that while I never met Erik, we may have been neighbors. I do feel I know him a little now, judging from the idiosyncratic things mourners have left as offerings, including chalk, vodka, bubble soap, and a dead, flattened turtle.

I don’t know what happened, but I note that he died quite young. (He was, in fact, the same age as my sister, which will probably always seem way too young for bad things, even when I’m 100 and she’s just 95.) My condolences to the family of Mr. Fitzpatrick, and to anyone who cared enough to put together this creative tribute.

NileGuide

Here’s a travel site I found out about recently through a former co-worker of Pipi’s. It’s called NileGuide. The site is more of a travel planning site than a place to book tickets, and it features lots of content. At Travelocity, we used to dream about getting to write about travel without having to worry about selling anything, and NileGuide seems dedicated to doing just that. Best of all, they use a lot of freelance help, and I’ve been talking with the editors about contributing. It looks like I’m going to do some work on spec (publishing-speak for “without any promise of payment”) and if they like it, it may develop into something more regular. (And paid.) We’ll see how this turns out. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

Commissioned!

A few weeks ago, I pitched an article on Alice Springs, Australia, to Curve magazine. Today, I heard back from them and it was good news: They want me to go ahead and write it.

I’m not exactly going to retire on the commission from this piece, but I’m excited about it nonetheless. I really do like Curve, which I’ve been reading since the magazine and I were both new on the scene. The editor also seems to share my general ideas about length, content, and tone, and gave me a generous deadline, so I’ve got a good feeling about the project.

Travel Anxiety Dream

I have travel anxiety dreams a lot, or maybe I should say that when I have anxiety dreams, they usually have to do with travel.

Usually these dreams involve scenarios that start out plausible but quickly compound. In these dreams, I haven’t just forgotten to pack something important; I’ve neglected to pack at all, and I’m not just having trouble getting a ride to the airport; I am, for some reason, attempting to get there on foot. (Good thing I never have any luggage.)

So last night’s dream came as somewhat of a relief, if only because I managed to create an entirely new problem for myself.

First of all, I was on a flight to Australia (it’s always Australia!) that included a stop in Iceland. That was stressful enough. But then, to make things more interesting (it was a very long flight, after all), I took it upon myself to clean all the ovens in the galley. They were all self-cleaning, and almost as soon as I turned them on, they started to smoke badly, which really upset my ungrateful fellow passengers. I decided that the only way to deflect suspicion of my involvement was to fake sleep, so I did, and interestingly, that’s when I finally woke up.

L.A. Times

In the spirit of “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I just sent an article on Australia to the Los Angeles Times. They are notoriously picky and selective, but the worst that can happen is rejection, which is not the end of the world. In my experience, rejection, Times-style, comes mercifully quickly, and it puts you in excellent company. We’ll see what happens.

Happy Mothers Day…

….Or “Moters Day,” as we call it in the 510, where everything is just a little bit grittier. Here’s wishing all the moms out there breakfast in bed, a nice bouquet of fresh flowers, and a big, new can of 10W-40.

Another Way of Counting

Speaking of country counts, here’s an interesting (and by “interesting,” I mean “borderline crackpot”) web site for a travel club based in southern California. It’s called the Travelers’ Century Club, and it is for people who can say they’ve been to 100 countries. That sounds like a lot, but the way they count countries, you probably went through two or three on your way to work today.

For the TCC, the U.N.’s official list of 192 countries is just a starting point. According to the TCC, if a region is separated by geography or culture from its official country, then it counts as a separate place. Alaska and the continental United States, for example, are counted as two different countries.

According to the TCC, there are six countries in North America, seven in Antarctica, 51 in Asia, and 67 in Europe. Worldwide, they reckon 320 total countries. By this count, you have probably traveled abroad without even knowing it. According to this group, I have been to 28 countries, which isn’t so much more than my U.N. tally, but does include accounting irregularities that would not have occurred to me, such as separating Russia from Siberia, and calling St. Barths a sovereign nation.

How Many Countries Have You Been To?

It sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t always. The answer really depends on the definition of a country, and that’s not always straightforward. My personal rule of thumb is that if a region produces its own stamps and coins, then it’s a country, but obviously not every person would agree with me. (I’m not even sure every coin and stamp collector would agree with me.)

Things get complicated when countries split up or reunite. If I’d been to Bonn in the 1980s, for example, I could say I’d been to West Germany, but could I say I’ve been to Germany? I’ve never been to Bonn, so that’s purely hypothetical in my case, but consider Hong Kong. I was there in 1989, and it felt like a country to me. But it was an English colony then, and now of course it’s a Chinese city, so I’m not sure how to count that. (Taiwan’s problematic, too. I feel like I’ve been to three separate Chinese-speaking countries, but there are those who would argue that bitterly.)

Then there are countries that attain their independence (or something akin to it), such as is about to happen to several islands in the Caribbean.

All five of the islands (or parts of islands, in the case of Sint Maarten) that make up the Netherlands Antilles have recently voted on the issue of independence. Two islands voted for “status aparte,” which as I understand it is something just short of complete independence from Holland. Two voted to move closer to the mother country, and one, little Sint Eustatius, decided it likes things just the way they were and doesn’t want to break up the Antilles.

This causes all kinds of problems for country counters. Were the Netherlands Antilles a country before? Do the separate islands count as sovereign nations now? It’s confusing, and I think you could probably check with several different authorities and get several different answers.

The only thing I know for sure is that if someone asks me how many countries I’ve been to, all I can say is, “Not enough yet.”

Pitching to Curve

In addition to pestering the Chronicle, I also pitched an article on Alice Springs, Australia, to Curve magazine. Curve is a lesbian publication, and Alice Springs is, for some reason, a lesbian magnet, so I think it’s a good fit. We’ll see. I haven’t heard back yet, but that might be good news. The last time I pitched to Curve, I got a rejection back within the hour, so I’m going to hope they take their time on this one.

Keeping up the Barrage

Undaunted, I’m sending more stuff the Chronicle’s way. You know how they say you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take? Well, then I’m just going to keep booting articles at the Chronicle. Eventually, one will get by.

I just sent a long article on Australia, specifically on the Indian Pacific Train. Let’s hope my timing’s better on this one.

Shanghai Surprise

I got an email from the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle rejecting an article I’d submitted about Shanghai. Two things lessened the sting, though. The first was that it was a very nice note. I’m used to not hearing anything from editors at all, so to get a note that is not just polite, but in fact mildly encouraging, seemed remarkable.

The other thing that made it easier to take is that I knew it was coming. Just a few days after I sent the article to the Chronicle, the paper ran another piece about Shanghai. When I saw that, I knew they wouldn’t feature the city again any time soon. So the printed article was effectively a rejection notice, even though it was of course intended in no such way—I doubt the editor had even seen my article yet.

Volcation

I wish I could say I thought of the word “volcation,” meaning, “A trip extended by Eyjafjallajokull.” But I didn’t; I read it somewhere.

I am reminded of the word because Pipi and I actually met someone over the weekend who was on a volcation. At the Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley, we met a man who’d been killing time in the Bay Area for almost a week because he had been completely unable to get a flight home to Sweden. He didn’t seem to be too upset about the delay, but he told us he was hopeful that he would be able to catch a flight Sunday. I don’t know if he did or not, but it looks like as long as his flight didn’t stop in Iceland, he’s probably home by now.

I hope our Swedish friend made it, and that there aren’t too many other stranded travelers still flipping through guidebooks, trying to find more things to do in northern California.

If you are still stuck here, though, I recommend skipping the Pyramid tour. Pyramid makes good beer, but the tour consists of peering into a series of empty stainless steel tanks while struggling to hear the waifish tour guide over the roar of several hundred bottles a minute rattling off the assembly line. If you really want to learn about American beer, your volcation time would be better spent at a barstool on a self-directed course of education.

It’s Not Just You

Nobody knows how to pronounce the name of that volcano in Iceland.

No Need to Panic

Cost Plus sells a cookie called Arnott’s year-round. These cookies are, to my Yankee tongue, indistinguishable from Tim Tams, and because Arnott’s is the name of the Australian company that makes Tim Tams, I think they are the same, just branded differently for some reason.

So if your local grocery store is sold out of Tim Tams for the year, and you live near a Cost Plus, you’re going to be okay. If you don’t, though, you’ll need to stock up now. Tim Tams freeze well.

Or so I hear.

The Big T—Time is Running Out

No, not taxes. Tim Tams.

Every year, between November and March, Pepperidge Farms imports Tim Tam chocolate cookies from Australia and sells them in grocery stores all over the United States. Yesterday, I saw a stack of them at my local Lucky being sold at clearance rates, reminding me that the Tim Tam window has closed for this year. Get yours quickly! (And cheaply—yesterday’s were going for just $2.99. Allegedly.)

The Cal Neva Closes

Here’s a news item that made me a little wistful: The Cal Neva Casino, in Stateline, NV has closed.

All the articles I’ve read about it say the closure was inevitable because the place was so run-down and its time had so clearly passed. That may be so, but to me, the place had its charms and I’m a little sad to see it go.

The Cal Neva was once owned by Frank Sinatra, and served as a hangout for the Rat Pack and associates (including, allegedly, J.F.K and Marilyn Monroe). The place coasted on that reputation for a long while, but all that was a bit before my time, so I can’t say it was any lingering ring-a-ding-dinging that attracted me to the place. Nor was I pulled off the highway by the architecture, a mix of ski-chalet A-frame and faux Native American kitsch that passed from “retro” into the territory of “somewhat embarrassing” decades ago.

No, the Cal Neva’s charms were, for me, subtle and twofold. The first thing I loved was that the building lay right on the state line separating California from Nevada. Just outside the gaming area was a large room with a fireplace and a silver-and-gold stripe running along the floor and up the wall, straight through the fireplace. This line represented the border between the two states, and just about everyone who visited got a photo of themselves straddling it. (I was traveling alone the last time I went, so my picture just shows my two sneakers on either side of the line—but I know it’s me.)

Geographical quirks aside, I also loved the fact that the casino had real old-fashioned slot machines, the kind where you pump in real coins and pull the handle to set the reels spinning. Every other slot machine I’ve seen recently (which is admittedly not many) has been credit, not cash based, and most seem to be activated by tapping a button, not pulling a lever. I guess I’m old-fashioned about such things because I love the tactile sensation of jingling a tumbler full of coins in one mitt and shaking the bandit’s hand with the other.

After my first such session, during which I managed to make several handfuls of nickels last all evening, I looked at my grimy hands and realized for the first time how literal the phrase “filthy lucre” can be. So I fully understand, and on some level approve of the trend towards electronic funds. But I still love pawing through buckets of coins. Once I did find a real treasure—a minor one, but a treasure to me nonetheless. Looking through the rolls of nickels I’d purchased (no, I’m not exactly a high roller), I found a buffalo nickel. It was so worn I can’t be sure of the date, but I know it can’t have been minted any later than 1938, because that’s the last year they made that kind of nickel. I had a few in my collection already, coins I’d either purchased or been given, but this was the first and so far the only time I’d ever found one in change.

So there you have it—two highly personal and idiosyncratic reasons that I will miss the Cal Neva casino. Will I get over this loss? Yes, pretty quickly, I’m sure. I’m not even up at Lake Tahoe very often. But the next time I am there, the experience will be a little bit tidier—and a little bit less colorful.

The Iron and Silk Road

Several years ago, I took a train from Beijing to Moscow. It took about two weeks, although I did make a few stops along the way. If I’d gone express, it would have taken just about exactly one week.

People always ask me if I found seven days of train travel boring, and the answer is that I really didn’t until the very last day. I’m not sure if that’s because the trip really was one day too long, or if I just didn’t allow myself to get antsy until I was within sight of the finish. In any case, I can safely say that for me, the idea of taking a week to travel from the heart of the Middle Kingdom to the edge of Europe is pretty reasonable.

Which is why I have mixed feelings about this article, announcing China’s plan to build a high-speed train that would cover the distance between London and Beijing in about two days. I can see that this would be an amazing feat of technology, and would really make life easier for people who can’t afford to fly and who don’t have the luxury of two weeks to spend on a round-trip.

But two days? That’s just too fast. Imagine sleeping through all of Siberia, or blinking and missing Poland. You’d get almost all of the disorientation and jet lag of air travel, and little of the scenery gazing and platform pierogi breaks of train travel.

(And if you think I’m indignant, imagine how horrified an actual ancient Silk Road trader would be. They’re probably already upset that the trip can now be done in a week, without even a stop to barter for fresh camels in Samarkand.)

They Loved It, But They’re Not in Love With It

Sometimes when I submit a piece to an editor, I get a nice personal rejection. Sometimes it’s more of a form letter. Sometimes I don’t hear anything. And sometimes, like yesterday, the news is delivered with all the subtlety of an eighth-grader trying to break up with someone.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent an article to the Chronicle about Shanghai. On Sunday, I opened up the travel section, and it was all about Shanghai. I wasn’t in it, though. Probably this is just bad timing on my part. Or maybe they’re just not that into me. Either way—ouch.

One Thing Down

I did get one article sent off. Not the Australian train article, although I did do enough of what I call “un-writing” (and which most people call “cutting hundreds of unnecessary words”) that I think I got that one back on track. So to speak.

No, what I sent away for publication is an updated service piece on Shanghai. I sent it once before to the San Francisco Chronicle, and never heard a peep about it. Normally, no response means “no,” and pressing the issue will only annoy the editor. But there’s been a regime change since I submitted it last, so Shanghai will be new to the current editor. Let’s hope he’s more of a fan of urban travel than the last guy was.

I Think I Can…

The Broken Hill story would be a good companion piece to a story I’m working on about the Indian Pacific train, but I seem to be stuck on that one. Does this ever happen to any of you? The more I work on the train piece, the more it just gets longer without getting any better.

Sometimes when a project isn’t going anywhere for me, I give it a rest. Usually that helps. That’s what I’ve done here. Having not thought about the train story consciously for a few weeks, I feel ready to sneak up on it and do some real writing (and probably a fair amount of un-writing) on it now. I’ll let you know when I finally get it ready for publication. (I say this mostly for my own benefit—I’ve said I’m going to finish it, so now I have to!

Oh, I Should Have Mentioned…

…That the honorably-mentioned story in question is an essay I wrote about the fading mining town of Broken Hill, Australia. This is a story that started life as a blog post written soon after my visit, which then got cleaned up and polished into something I was happier with. Now I’m emboldened to try to get the essay published.

Finishing Just off the Podium

In this Olympic season, I’m pleased to announce a minor award of my own: I earned an honorable mention in the 2010 Solas Awards travel writing contest.

Certainly it would have been nice to be one of the top three in a category, but we can’t all be Apolo Ono. Somebody has to be Turkish figure skater Tuğba Karademir, happy just to be there and to have not taken a pratfall on the big stage.

And, unlike the Olympics, the Solas Awards happen every year. I’m going to start training now for 2011.

Possible Use for Twitter

They say that Twitter is very good for complaining. We’ll soon see. I’m unleashing the power of Twitter on Comcast, who have so far been unresponsive to every form of direct communication I can think of short of semaphore. Perhaps a little public shame can get them to call me back.

Blurb.com

I’ve been meaning for a while now to mention a pretty cool website called Blurb.com. It’s a way to self-publish books, and to sell them as well. If I wanted to, I could technically claim to have had a book published, because I used the site to create a book about my trip to Australia last year that is officially for sale on the Blurb site.

Had I really intended to sell any of these books, I would have done a lot of things differently, including making the book shorter and smaller in size. The format I picked is the most expensive. This choice drove the price of the book up so far that I don’t realistically expect anyone to purchase it.

Still, the idea is great. It’s possible to create and sell very affordable books without putting any money down. Posting your book file on the site is free, meaning you avoid all of the costs usually associated with vanity publishing.

The way it works is that whenever anyone orders a copy of the book, the site prints one up and sends it directly to that person, meaning an author also avoids a lot of the logistical problems associated with self-publishing, like basements and car trunks full of inventory.

In my particular case, I also expect to avoid typical author hassles like keeping track of earnings, because I don’t think there are going to be any. If anyone should order the book, though, the site would send me my profit directly. Best of all, I get to determine how big that profit is. The site sets a base price, and I, as the author, get to say how many dollars extra I want them to tack on—I get to keep that.

Believe it or not, I actually set a very modest profit margin for myself. I just made the mistake of picking an expensive layout with a high base price. But I don’t really regret it, because I’m very happy with the coffee-table quality scrapbook I now have of my adventure.

City of Thieves

Coincidentally, I am not just snacking my way through Russian memories at the moment. I’m also currently reading an excellent book about the country: City of Thieves, by David Benioff.

This novel takes place in St. Petersburg during WWII, when the Germans were laying siege to the city. It’s a dramatic story, but the book is also very funny in a deeply dark sort of way. I’m really enjoying it, all the more because the author is a college classmate of mine. (I don’t think we ever even met. I just feel possessive of classmates who’ve done well for themselves and I feel the need to give them a shout-out.)

Dining-Room Chair Travel

It’s well documented that you can travel vicariously through travel literature, but who else is with me on virtually traveling the world by snacking?

Pipi and I recently found a great place for this. It’s a strange little store called the Euromix Deli on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. Although there are some western European products, most of the inventory is eastern European, and most of that is Russian. Recently Pipi picked up a mix of chocolate candies that reminded me of what a weird, wonderful place Russia is. They’re not great chocolates—Russians apparently like hazelnut (and wax) a lot more than I do, but I’m really enjoying the eccentric wrappers.

A Twit, Maybe?

What do you call one who uses Twitter? Someone who doesn’t know the answer to that question probably doesn’t have any business using the service, but I’m not letting that stop me. I have belatedly entered the Twitterverse, and you can follow me at http://twitter.com/nicoleclausing. (You don’t need to be a Twitter member yourself; you can always just go that URL on any computer for updates.)

I don’t post very often—to be honest, I haven’t really taken to Twitter yet, and at my age, Tweetspeak will probably always be a second language. But I invite you to follow my fledgling efforts anyway. I promise, no tweets about what I had for lunch, no deliberate misspellings, and, if I should ever owe anyone an apology for anything, you won’t see it there.

Last Warning

Comcast has one more day to get back to me, and then I’m going all Twitter on them.

Dawning Realization

I just don’t think Comcast is that into me.

Also Spotted

On the same walk where I spotted the demolished building, I also saw a sign in someone’s yard next to a beautiful lemon tree in full fruit. The sign said:

“To the lady up the street who helped herself to a whole bag of lemons, they weren’t yours to take.”

“We’re still waiting for our lemon bars.”

I’ll Take the Stairs, Thanks

I took this picture today while walking past a construction site (actually a de-construction site) at the corner of Piedmont and MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland. I find the elevator sign perversely amusing.

Your Call is Important to You

I spoke to Comcast on February 3. When I did, they strongly implied that someone would get back to me within 48 hours. That didn’t happen, so for fun, I didn’t call them for a few days, either, just so they’d know how that felt.

Oddly, when I did call to check on my trouble ticket, they almost acted like they were hoping I wouldn’t call at all. Some companies play hard to get, I guess. The person I talked to promised to spend the next 72 hours thinking about my problem so hard that he will almost certainly not find the time to catch up with me before Thursday.

The Oxymoron That is Comcast Customer Service

I’m starting to think I’m the only person on earth who uses the personal web page feature on Comcast. I don’t get the feeling any developer has looked at this function in years, and no one in tech support has any idea how to help me.

I chatted online with three different support personnel. Two of them had me call phone numbers that they swore were lines dedicated to helping people with their personal web pages. (The third person’s only suggestion was to restart my computer.) Each time the phone number I was given turned out to be the Comcast main switchboard--the same number I’d call if I had trouble with my cable TV. Nobody could help me. In fact, in both cases, the people I reached on the phone told me web page issues could only be handled via online chat. Of course, the chat people wanted me to use the phone. Needless to say, my problem did not get resolved today.

So I’m pretty mad at Comcast right now, and I still can’t get my web page updated, which seems like it shouldn’t be a very difficult thing to do. (The page is live online, but I can’t edit it anymore--and I think we can all agree that it needs help.) I guess it’s time to look into another web host, although I have only the barest idea how to go about that.

Utility Futility

Has anyone ever tried using Comcast’s personal web page feature? And did you find it to be the single most frustrating thing you’d done in months?

If You Really Want to Hear About It….

….J. D. Salinger is dead, and that makes me a little bit sad. I know he was about a million years old, and a difficult man, but I’m still sad. The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books of all time. It was the first novel that made me see that literature could speak to me on a level other than pure entertainment.

Before discovering Salinger, I’d always liked reading stories, but I don’t think I understood until then that a book could be expected to have something to say about the human condition. The realization that I, as a girl growing up in small-town New Hampshire, might be thinking some of the same thoughts as a boy wandering the streets of McCarthy-era New York City, was mind-blowing.

If that seems like a banal thing to cause a mental meltdown, please note that I was only about 11 or 12 at the time. I also ask you to remember what it’s like to be that age—just old enough to start to suspect that people are not always as they seem, but young enough to believe that you might be the only person who has figured this out. Think how much you might have appreciated having a streetwise older brother figure to assure you that you’re not imagining it; that people really can be phony sometimes.

I’ve re-read The Catcher in the Rye several times over the years, and I take a little something different from it every time—which is not surprising considering that I was Holden’s little sister’s age the first time I read the book, and now I’m old enough to be his mother. At the age of 12, I thought Holden was a very cool, wordly guy. Later, I realized that he’s kind of a brat. Eventually, I began to understand that he’s very troubled, and maybe even a little insane.

The thing I keep coming back to every time, no matter how I’m currently feeling about the protagonist, is gratitude to Salinger for having been the one to show me how literature is supposed to work. I’m also grateful to him for having created the remarkable character of Holden Caulfield. Though Holden, like Salinger himself, was not always completely likable, he is memorable.

The news that the author of The Catcher in the Rye has died makes me sad because in a way J. D. Salinger’s death is also Holden Caulfield’s death. Though no one really expected a sequel after all these years, now all hope of ever seeing Holden again is completely extinguished. It’s always sad to lose someone who was important to you when you were young, even if they were troubled, and even if your feelings about them have changed over time.

Rest in peace, you goddam madman genius.

A Girl Can (Day) Dream

Here’s something kind of fun: Frommer’s is having a contest designed to solicit travel photos to be used on the cover of their guides. So I spent much more of the afternoon than I should have going through vacation shots. That was a nice way to procrastinate!

Everyone Loves the Sound of a Plane in the Distance

I’m a little over the rain. I know we need it, but after what seems like weeks of gray skies, I’m ready for the precipitation to fall somewhere else, like maybe right into the Hetch Hetchy Resevoir. I think it’s more important that the rain fall somewhere useful, rather than on my already sodden lawn, which is starting to look like a music festival just happened there.

Still, there is one silver lining, so to speak, to all these clouds: When the weather is bad here, airplanes fly very low over our house. I secretly love this. Today was one of those special days when the weather was bad enough that planes used the foul-weather flight path, but good enough that the clouds didn’t hide my view of the aircraft. It was ideal plane-spotting weather. Most of the airplanes I saw today were little 737s, but I caught a glimpse of a few bigger ones, which I imagined to be international flights headed to SFO.

That’s a large part of what I like about these massive pieces of machinery roaring over my neighborhood. I like to speculate about where each plane has come from, where it’s going, and who is on it. Is it someone’s first time on a plane? Is anyone on board going to start a new life when they get where they’re going? Who’s on a dream vacation, and who’s coming home after way too long? Why am I standing in a muddy yard when I could be on that plane, having some kind of adventure myself?

It occurs to me that the whine of jet engines a few thousand feet up is like the train whistle of the 21st century. It’s a harder noise to write a blues song about, but on a moody day, airplanes in the rain inspire some of the same lonesome longing you get from a freight train in the distance.

One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Whole Day….

…And two bombs in one week? That’s unthinkable, but it actually happened to Tsutomu Yamaguchi. In August of 1945, Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima for what I think can safely be described as the worst business trip ever. On the day he was supposed to leave Hiroshima, Little Boy exploded over the city. Mr. Yamaguchi made it home a few days later, but unfortunately, home was Nagasaki, and he got there just in time for the second bomb. He survived both blasts and lived on to a ripe old age, although when he did die—just recently—it was of a cancer that may well have been linked to the blasts.

Interestingly, Mr. Yamaguchi is officially recognized by the Japanese government as the only double-bomb survivor, although there are known to have been others. Now that he is gone, I don’t know if another nijyuu hibakusha will take on the mantle of iconic survivor. Surely no one will allow these events to be forgotten in any case. Rest in peace, Yamaguchi-San.

Chocolate, a Love Story

This morning Pipi mentioned that she had received an e-mail from her boyfriend, and I wasn’t a bit worried. I knew exactly what she meant: She’d gotten a marketing message from Max Brenner. Yes, we love the wholly fictitious Max Brenner so much we want to marry him, and if imaginary marriage is ever legalized here, we just might.

In the meantime, we have our love, and this amazing book, to keep us warm. Chocolate A Love Story is one of the most sensuous cookbooks ever written. Perhaps you never realized how fine the line between the cookbook and bodice-ripper genres is. I know I hadn’t until I skimmed the table of contents and saw recipes like “Kinky Pavlova” and “Love and Hate Doughnuts.” This book is like a soap opera, a cookbook, and a love note all rolled up into one. It’s that good, people. Check it out!

Mo’ Brenner

The year has started with fabulous news on the chocolate front: Max Brenner will double the number of its U.S. locations in 2010.

Currently there are two American Maxes, one in New York, and one in Philadelphia. I just don’t get to either of these cities very often, so I was very happy to recently learn that by the end of the year there will be a Max Brenner in Boston, a city I like a lot; and Las Vegas, a place I can take or leave but which is just a quick non-stop flight from here.

We’re Back

I hadn’t intended for my Christmas break to be this long, but a little vacation felt good. I hope everyone had a good holiday, and that the new year has been good to you so far.

No Discernable Difference

After rounds and rounds of rigorous scientific testing, Pipi and I are able to report that the Tim Tams and the Arnott’s Original cookies sold in the United States appear to be identical in every significant way.

There are tiny differences. One brand has a slightly higher percentage of its calories from fat, and the other has slightly more carbohydrate. The ingredient lists aren’t quite identical, but the differences could just stem from there being two ways of saying the same thing. I can’t taste any difference between the two kinds, and they both taste just like my memory of the Australian version.

The conclusion? If you see something—anything—that looks like a Tim Tam on American grocery story shelves, buy it!

A Partial Explanation

According to Wikipedia (I also verified this on the Tim Tam/Pepperidge Farm site), Pepperidge Farm is distributing honest-to-goodness Tim Tam cookies in the United States. They originally had a deal exclusively with Target, but now you can find them in lots of grocery stores all over the country

That’s the good news. The bad news is that they are only available in the United States between October and March. I don’t know why. Consider it a Christmas present from our friends down under. (I’m talking about the Pepperidge Farm version; I don’t know about the availability of the Arnott’s brand cookies at Cost Plus. You can bet I’ll be looking into it!)

Sweet Confusion

In Australia, as I may have mentioned a few dozen times, they have these great cookies called Tim Tams, made by the Arnott’s company.

In the United States, you can get what seems like the same cookie at Cost Plus stores, only they aren’t called Tim Tams. They’re called Arnott’s instead.

Recently, I discovered that my favorite grocery store in the Bay Area, Farmer Joe’s, sells a cookie that’s actually called Tim Tam. Only these cookies are manufactured by the Pepperidge Farm Company. They, too, seem to be the same cookie (or should I say “biscuit”) that is so popular down under.

Can all three of these things really be the same product? What is the difference, if any, between the Tim Tam and Arnott’s cookies sold in the United States? If only there were some way to compare and contrast the taste of the two cookies, Wait, I just thought of something….

Bye Bye, Tai

I have to stop getting so attached to baby pandas. They always grow up and leave me. Pipi and I just saw this one at the Washington zoo in October.

The More Things Change….

I imagine nepotism in government is a problem many cities have. I know it has come up a lot lately in Oakland. Most recently a City Administrator was fired for allegedly putting several family members on the city payroll despite their shaky qualifications. She didn’t go down without a fight and the case has been in the news on and off for what seems like years now.

But here’s something I found on one of my walks that assures me that nepotism is nothing new in Oakland, and probably is no worse now than it ever was. Take a look at this plaque, erected in 1931. It’s posted in front of a sports facility then called the Davie Recreation Stadium, and now known as the Davie Tennis Stadium. The sign reveals that by 1931, three members of the Davie family had worked for the city of Oakland—one of them as the mayor.

Five times.

We just don’t have political dynasties like this in the East Bay anymore.

No Block Left Behind

Before Thanksgiving I thought I had finished the area between Grand and Lakeshore Avenues. And I had, all except for two blocks at the very pinnacle of the steepest hill, and, about a half a mile away, one block of a street that is mostly in Piedmont but which starts in Oakland.

Or maybe it ends in Oakland. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

Such are the hazards of exploring the non-grid neighborhoods of the city. The Grand Lake/Lakeshore area is hilly, and the streets tend to twist and turn, seldom meeting each other at right angles. And for some reason, somebody thought it would be cute to give most of the streets names that start with the letter “W.” It can be hard, at times, to remember if you’re supposed to be on Wickson, Walker, Winsor, or Weldon. That last one ends abruptly and then begins again a few hundred yards later on the other side of a hill, making it seem like there are two different streets with exactly the same name.

Navigationally, this was my most challenging neighborhood yet, and with all the hills, probably my most physically taxing, as well. But that’s all good. I’m doing this largely to get exercise and to get better at navigating my city, so the more mountainous and confusing the terrain, the better.

Happy Thanksgiving

Do you have a Thanksgiving-day ritual? Watching the Macy’s parade, maybe, or fighting with your siblings over who gets to open the can and dump out the quivering cylinder of cranberry sauce? My traditions involve the ritual consumption of exactly one Brussels sprout, just to make sure I still don’t like them; taking a post-meal walk; and compelling everyone to read the story of my first Thanksgiving away from home.


A Tale of Two Turkeys

Even though it was speaking English, I wanted the voice in my head to go away.

“You’re forgetting something,” it murmured as I stepped off the train in Shijiazhuang, in China’s Hebei Province. “Didn’t you have another bag?” it asked, more insistently, as I dodged touts and money-changers on my way to the bus stop outside the station. By the time I was boarding the local bus that would take me to my friend Sarah’s apartment, the voice was bellowing like a Red Guard. “Hey, you left something on the train!”

Halfway to the teachers’ college where Sarah taught English, 175 miles southwest of Beijing, my day flashed before my eyes with sudden clarity. I remembered waking up in the women’s dorm room at the Qiao Yuan youth hostel in Beijing. The long room full of closely spaced cots had all the ambiance of an orphanage. The beds’ occupants weren’t real charity cases, though, just frugal European and American backpackers like myself, new university graduates taking a travel deferment on adulthood.

I remembered taking a bus to Tiananmen Square. The Beijing bus had been so packed that sardined riders in front passed their one-mao bills hand-over-hand to the fare collector perched in the back.

I remembered walking from the square to the friendship store on Jianguomenwai Boulevard. There had been crunching locust-tree leaves underfoot, and the crisp air smelled like coal dust and candied crab apples.

I remembered picking up a box of Australian chocolate cookies and an over-priced, under-fed frozen turkey from Hong Kong. I remembered tucking the bird under my arm like a clammy football and trotting off to the central station, where I just made my train.

I remembered getting on the local bus in Shijiazhuang, feeling strangely light in spite of the frame pack on my back and the daypack slung across my chest. It was then that I understood what the nagging voice in my head was talking about: Out there in the darkness, chugging through the Chinese countryside, nestled cozily in the overhead storage area where I’d stashed it so a conductor could sweep up sunflower-seed shells and cigarette butts, was my Thanksgiving dinner.

Brandishing the cookie box before me like a protective shield, I knocked on Sarah’s door. “Hi, I brought cookies!” I yelped, hoping this would make my friend forget our deal: Sarah had promised that if I found a turkey, she would find a way to cook it.

Sarah considered my maniacally proffered gift. She also eyed my suspiciously light baggage. “You forgot something, didn’t you?” she asked. I replied the way anyone who’d just ruined her first Thanksgiving away from home would have: I burst into tears. Sarah responded by doing the very last thing I expected: She laughed until she needed to sit down.

As soon as we both could speak, we agreed that it was too late to do anything that night. Sarah, in fact, seemed to feel that although we’d lost a turkey, we’d gained a great holiday-gone-wrong story that shouldn’t be spoiled with a happy ending. I however, tossed and turned on the couch for hours feeling like the world’s biggest turkey myself. I’d spoiled Thanksgiving. I’d wasted a piece of meat that had cost more than most backpackers spent in a month on food. If I ever returned home my mother and grandmother, who between them effortlessly orchestrated a 10-dish dinner every Thanksgiving, would undoubtedly disown me. And that’s assuming I was even allowed back into my home state of Massachusetts. I slept fitfully that night, haunted by visions of puritanical authorities in buckled shoes sentencing me to wear a scarlet letter for the sin of Absent-mindedness.

Early the next morning I set off on a borrowed bicycle, armed with directions to the train station and a command of Mandarin about as reliable as the local electricity: adequate as long as I didn’t ask too much of it, but flickery, and prone to abrupt shutdowns.

Conversational circuits blew almost immediately at the station information booth. “You left what on the train?” the attendant asked incredulously, “You’ll have to go talk to security,” she snapped, and slammed the window shut. The brownout continued at security. “Did anyone turn in a frozen turkey?” I asked the matron at the desk. She sighed and rummaged half-heartedly through a box of thermoses, ceramic mugs, and other train detritus. “No, no turkeys here,” she said. “Try the information booth.”

I pedaled dejectedly back to Sarah’s, trying to cheer myself up by imagining my dinner being discovered by one of the starving Chinese children American mothers like to invoke to make their kids eat, but it didn’t help.

Sarah seemed almost relieved that the bird had not come home to roost. But because I felt so terrible, she volunteered her semi-bilingual neighbor, Mr. Yan, to help me talk turkey with security.

Talking about turkeys, incidentally, has not always been possible in China. Mandarin has a well-established word for chicken: ji. But the more recent introduction of turkeys required a new word, and the neologism chosen was huo ji, meaning, literally, “fire chicken.”

My understanding is that the “fire” part is meant to convey something like the English prefix “mega,” or “deluxe.” All I have ever been able to picture, however, when I hear the phrase is a rocket-powered Henny Penny doing screaming barrel rolls over her henhouse, shooting flames from her tail like a MiG.

For this reason, the conversation with security quickly became one of the most surreal I’ve ever had in my life. “Can you describe the fire chicken?” asked the first security officer, who looked like he ate railroad stowaways for breakfast. “She says the fire chicken weighs about five kilos,” translated Mr. Yan. The corners of his mouth twitched, but he kept it together. “Where did you last see the fire chicken?” asked the second officer, almost completely successfully swallowing a smile. “She left it in an overhead rack in a hard-seat car on Tuesday night…right?” Mr. Yan said, glancing at me for confirmation. “Dui, yes” I nodded, as solemnly as I could, desperately fighting back an attack of the giggles.

The men soldiered through the rest of their discussion. I struggled to keep up, biting my tongue every time the words “fire chicken” jumped out at me. Afterward, Mr. Yan explained to me that he’d learned that the train I’d been on had changed course at Shijiazhuang and was now bound for the province of Inner Mongolia. My backward bird looked to be heading north for the winter. “I’m sorry,” Mr. Yan said as kindly as he could while trying not to laugh. “I don’t think they’re going to find your fire chicken.”

Thanksgiving day passed with no sign of the wayward bird. I moped through Friday and most of Saturday until finally the god of feathery edibles decided I’d suffered enough. Returning from an errand, Sarah and I skidded our bikes to a stop in the dusty, brick-strewn courtyard in front of her building and saw Mr. Yan beaming in the doorway. “Guess who called,” he said, trying to sound casual. “The train station. They found your fire chicken.”

An hour later I was holding my well-traveled turkey in my arms. It was still frozen. By the next morning, the prodigal little bird was thawed, stuffed, trussed, and wedged into a portable oven that Sarah had somehow gotten her hands on. The giant egg-shaped device looked more like a beauty-parlor hair drier than an oven, but it did the trick, and several hours later, Sarah and Mr. Yan and I sat down to an inexpertly carved but perfectly cooked Thanksgiving turkey. We served it doused in a lumpy giblet gravy, accompanied by powdery rolls, banana bread, gluey mashed potatoes, and litchi-fruit salad. We washed it down with Sprite. It was the most modest Thanksgiving I’d ever been part of, but I can’t think of a single meal I’ve ever been more purely thankful for.

A lot has changed since that Thanksgiving of 1992. Sarah got married and moved to New Zealand. (She also became a vegetarian--our ultra free-range turkey turned out to be the last one she ever tasted.) Sarah goes back to China periodically and reports that the Middle Kingdom we remember of bike lanes and old women tottering on bound feet has taken such a great leap forward that I wouldn’t recognize it. Certainly China wouldn’t recognize me, more amply padded than in my backpacking days, and showing some gray in the blond hair that Chinese children used to dare each other to touch.

Even our idea of Thanksgiving has changed. The cozy story I was raised with in Massachusetts, the one with the friendly natives and grateful pilgrims, has been supplanted-- in progressive circles, at least--by a more complicated tale of mutual distrust and limited contact. I accept this revised version, but it has always seemed to me a shame that that first Plymouth Thanksgiving didn’t work out better. Because as I learned in China, it could have. Every part of the story--the bumbling new arrivals, the face-saving locals, the improvised feast, the sharing of unfamiliar foods, the gratitude--it all could all have happened. I know because it all happened to me.

(Published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Dallas Morning News, and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2007.

Arachnophobia

Today I can say that I’ve finished walking the Trestle Glen neighborhood of Oakland. This is a nice central Oakland area that abuts Glenview on one side and the city of Piedmont on the other. It’s a fine neighborhood full of beautiful homes, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected to. For some weird reason Trestle Glen is full of spiders. I think it is a spidery time of year, because right now I’m seeing more in my backyard than usual, but ours are fairly small. Trestle Glen spiders are big and they hang out in the middle of webs spun between landscape elements looking creepy. Did I mention I don’t like spiders? Well, I don’t. I almost think I’m ready for a more urban neighborhood, one without so much flora and fauna.

Not Strictly Related, But….

….Isn’t this guy pretty darned cute? He’s my parents’ new cat, Grissom. He’s five months old, and weighs about five pounds, which is pretty remarkable because he appears to be boneless.

Another Thought on Cockpit Catastrophes

My understanding is that the crew of the Continental Airlines flight that lost its captain came under some criticism for not telling the passengers what was going on. But count me among those who would prefer to be blissfully unaware. I am of Pilot-American descent, but I did not inherit the unflappable gene. In a situation that sounds serious, but isn’t really, please, for the sake of everyone else in my row, just keep me in the dark.

Well Then, What Would be Dramatic?

In my last post, I mentioned that pilots tend to be pretty even-keeled people, not prone to exaggeration or hysteria. Here’s a good example of what I mean. The following quote is from an interview with an Air France co-pilot. The interview was conducted a few months ago, after an incident where a Continental Airlines captain dropped dead over the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of the crew continued the flight without mentioning the loss to the passengers.

This co-pilot was not on that particular flight, but he said that in training he had practiced similar situations where the captain is suddenly unavailable. Did this unnerve him? Not at all. Here’s his take on it:

"It's not a drama. If the captain is ill or incapacitated, you make sure he isn't blocking any controls or the wheel."

So there you have it. If you should lose a crewmember mid-flight, no worries. He or she will be safely stowed somewhere out of the way and everybody else will be just fine.

Extra Miles

Another benefit to our unexpected visit to Denver: American Airlines awarded us 4,000 extra frequent-flier miles for our trouble. That’s quite a bonus, considering we only went about 100 miles out of our way.

Another Learning Experience

Having nearly missed our flight out of D.C., I hoped the rest of our trip home would go smoothly. As it turned out, the self-inflicted portion of the drama was over, but things would continue to be interesting.

The flight from Washington to Chicago was uneventful and got us there in plenty of time to make our connection to San Francisco. This flight, too, seemed routine at first. It took off on time, and was fairly crowded, but the only other person in our row was a tiny teenager in the window seat next to me, so it wasn’t so bad. She was a little chatty, but mostly sat quietly writing out answers to study questions about the French revolution in big round loopy cursive. I didn’t know the answers to any of the questions. It’s been a long time since I was her age.

About 100 miles west of Denver, the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that he had some “bad news.” This struck fear into my heart. If I tell you I’ve got bad news, it’s entirely possible that I will follow this statement with, “You’ll never guess who got voted off American Idol last night.” In my experience, though, pilots aren’t like this. If they say it’s bad, it really is bad.

This guy must be considered excitable by his peers, though, because the news wasn’t that bad. It turned out that he had detected a problem with the oxygen masks, and determined that they weren’t going to work if we lost pressure. There was no reason to think we were going to lose pressure, but this seems to be the kind of problem that requires a plane to land immediately, and so we turned back to Denver.

We landed safely, if a little anxiously. This was my first diversion ever caused by a mechanical problem. As we approached the terminal, the one with the weird white peaks on it, the girl in our row asked me if it were a Cirque du Soleil tent. I’ve always thought the Denver airport’s roof looks like angry icebergs bobbing around the ocean, and I’ve never found the sight the least bit reassuring. I liked her perspective.

The plane sat parked near the terminal for about two hours. We were initially told that mechanics would try to figure out quickly whether they could fix the problem that evening or if they would need to put us on another plane. By this time it was about 8pm locally, and I was starting to worry that we were going to spend the night in Denver.

I wouldn’t have minded that so much, except that I was afraid Pipi and I were going to have to baby-sit the fetal flyer. Surprisingly late into the ordeal, it was revealed that her father was in the first-class cabin, but for a while, it looked like Pipi and I were the only grown-ups she knew on board. Because I was immediately next to her, I got the bulk of the wide-eyed questions.

This was sort of annoying, but touching as well, because I realized she was ascribing magical adult powers to me. She had no idea how long we’d be on the ground, and I didn’t either, but she assumed I did, because I’m a grown-up, and grown-ups just know things that kids can’t guess at. When, for example, some of the maintenance crew went to talk to the pilots, she tugged my sleeve and asked how much longer this meant we’d be waiting. I had the impression she thought this was something I might have learned as part of some kind of adult rite of passage. I think she expected me to say, “Well, during freshman week in college, I learned that no means no, that you should never mix beer and hard liquor, and that when the guy in orange talks to the pilot, you’ll be on the ground another 45 minutes.”

I didn’t say this, of course. I told her the only thing I could, which was that I really had no better idea than she did. In doing so, I realize I gave her a piece of information that she’s too young to know what to do with just yet. Eventually, this and other data points will lead her to the inevitable realization that most grown-ups don’t have any idea what’s going on much of the time; that most of us, in fact, barely recognize ourselves as adults, and spend more time than we ever imagined we would at the mercy of big boys with official-looking caps and vests. This girl was a few years away from starting to suspect this, though. For now, she was just an unlucky kid with an absentee Dad and the most useless grown-ups ever for seat-mates. I think she was starting to worry.

Luckily, there was someone in charge, and they got the oxygen fixed and we were able to continue the trip using the original aircraft. We got to San Francisco about three hours late, an annoying delay that kept us all up way past our regular bedtimes, but which did at least put us all a little further down the path toward being grown-ups.

Not So Fast

Our flight out of Washington was scheduled just late enough that Pipi and I had time for a quick lunch with my grandparents. I knew we were lingering a little too long over dessert, but it was mid-day, we had our boarding passes, and the airport wasn’t too far away, so what did we need extra time for?

Finally tearing ourselves away from the meal, we stopped a mile or two down the road to top off the gas in the rental car. I’m glad I stopped there and not someplace closer to the airport because as I tried to activate the pump, I realized I didn’t have my wallet with me.

I got that sick feeling that you get when you know you’ve messed up very badly. I was too worked up to think clearly, and it took me a long time to remember the last place I’d seen my wallet. Although checking for I.D. is normally a part of my packing-up routine coming and going, I wasn’t actually sure I’d seen the wallet since dinner the night before.

At first I thought I must have left it at Pipi’s aunt and uncle’s house. I knew we’d never make it back there in time to catch the flight, so I started formulating a plan to drop Pipi off at the airport, extend the rental car, and then spend the rest of the day driving around Virginia by myself trying to retrace my steps.

Suddenly, though, I realized what had probably happened: Just before lunch, which we’d eaten at the dining hall at my grandparent’s retirement community, Pipi and I had stopped by their condo to print our boarding passes. I must have taken my wallet out of my knapsack to retrieve my frequent-flyer card, and left it near the computer.

A quick call to my grandmother confirmed that this is exactly what I’d done. We made a rapid return, and my grandparents met us outside their building with the wallet. Then it was back to the gas station. I might not be able to avoid paying a rebooking fee for our missed flights, but at least I could head off the $8-per-gallon fee for bringing a car back empty at National Airport.

We filled up, got to the airport with the needle still indicating “Full,” and dropped off the car. Security wasn’t bad, and we got to our gate just as they were announcing that the last boarding group was free to get on the plane.

I’m not going to say that our making the flight was miraculous. It was very lucky, though. Let’s call it a happy ending to what could have been a painful lesson about the importance of allowing extra time when traveling and keeping track of your things.

Going Gaga in D.C.

The National Equality March took place on a beautiful day. It was sunny and dry, with a hint of fall in the air. It was a perfect day for a stroll to the Capitol Building with 100,000 or so of my closest gay friends.

I’m guessing wildly at the number of people in the crowd, of course. As with most protest marches, estimates varied wildly depending on who was doing the estimating. I heard everything from tens of thousands to 200,000. I have no gift for crowd counts myself. All I know is that it was a huge swathe of people that stretched for blocks and blocks.

The march started at McPherson Square, circled Lafayette Park, passed by the White House (I seemed to be the only person in the crowd alarmed by the snipers on the roof—apparently they’re old news to Washingtonians), and then headed down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building lawn.

Although the route covered more than two miles, the march was over more quickly than I expected. The crowd was very well behaved, and if there were any counter protesters, they behaved themselves, too. It was a nice day, and I think everyone was in too good of a mood to get testy with anyone.

When I was younger, I almost never stuck around for the speakers after pride parades and protest marches. They were usually the least interesting part of the day for me, far overshadowed by the people-watching, sunbathing, and public consumption of alcohol. On this day, however, Pipi and I, happy to sit down for a while, listened to most of the speeches. I’m glad we did. Matthew Shepard’s mother spoke briefly, and I honestly don’t remember much of what she said, because she could just stand there silently and we would still love her to pieces. Cynthia Nixon spoke, which excited me in a star-struck kind of way. Lieutenant Dan Choi, a West Point-educated Arab linguist who is currently being discharged from the army for being gay spoke incredibly movingly and eloquently about the need to be brave and love whom you must no matter what the consequences—and he should know.

The biggest surprise of the afternoon was the musician Lady Gaga. Before traveling to Washington, D.C., I was only dimly aware of her. In the days before the march, I got a crash course in all things Gaga from Pipi’s fabulous 16-year-old cousin, who is a big fan, but I still wasn’t overly impressed.

It turns out that music is probably the least interesting thing about Lady Gaga. The musician, who is all of 23 years old and sings pop songs that are no more intellectually challenging than Madonna’s early hits, is an incredible ally to the gays. She wasn’t the most gifted speaker that day, but she was one of the most earnest. She just loves her gay fans and wants nothing but the best for us. So bless God, bless the gays, and bless Lady Gaga, who is doing what the HRC, Barney Frank, and even older pop stars like Melissa Etheridge and Elton John can’t do: Bringing a message of tolerance to the future voters of America.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere There’s Signs

Although the National Equality march was scheduled for a leisurely noon start (the Queer Nation does like its brunch), Pipi and I were up early perfecting our signs. We each came up with a double-sided sign on foamcore with a sturdy handle. I can’t tell you how many newbies there were out there holding floppy pieces of cardboard over their heads with both hands. Handles, people! Your arms will thank you later.

I didn’t feel up to trying to out-fab the crowd, so my signs were fairly straight-forward. One side said: “What’s the Hold-Up? End Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and the other said: “Obama, If Not Now, When?” Both were inspired by the president’s speech the night before where he promised to abolish both policies, but gave no hint about a timetable.

Pipi’s messages were more inspired. On one side, her sign said: “Help Gays Be Patriots—End Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” The other said: “Repeal DOMA—Don’t Let Canada Make us Look Bad.” (DOMA is the Defense of Marriage Act—please don’t ask me how anyone thinks they can defend marriage by prohibiting it.)

You can usually count on the gay community to come up with good signs. This crowd didn’t disappoint. The cheekiest one, one that I might not have had the guts to carry even if I’d thought of it, read: “Jesus hung out with 12 guys and a prostitute. He was more like me than you.” Another creative one said: “Jesus had two daddies, and someday so will my kids.”

Our signs didn’t get us on the evening news, but that’s okay. I think we did a pretty good job with them. We didn’t try to use them to address the haters. (Good thing, too. They’ve twisted Jesus’ words so much I’d hate to see what they’d do with mine.) We just stated what we wanted, plainly and simply.

Plus : Handles.

More Unlikely Allies

See, you just never know who your friends are.

(Actually, I think it was well known that Bea Arthur was a friend of the Friends of Dorothy, but still, $300,000 is above and beyond.)

Unexpected Allies

The renaissance revels were just the beginning of our Saturday. We still had some serious work to do, including stalking the cast of Glee and making a scene in front of the president.

Let me back up. We timed our trip to Washington, D.C. to coincide with the big National Equality March on Sunday, October 11. But of course, that wasn’t the only big event in town that weekend. Saturday night, there was a gala dinner in D.C. hosted by the Human Rights Campaign. President Obama was scheduled to speak, which was cool, but if Pipi and I were being honest with ourselves, we’d have admitted that the people we were really hoping to catch a glimpse of were the cast of the show Glee, some of whom were supposed to be attending the dinner. (I like this show so much more than I want to!)

Quick glimpses of these stars were about all we could hope for, because we were not guests at the dinner. We were just part of the motley crowd standing outside the venue with signs.

It would be unfair to describe us as protesters, because that would imply some sort of unified message. We were more of an accrual of people with assorted gripes. A few people were protesting the dinner itself, feeling that the time and money might be better spent doing….well, that part of the message wasn’t clear. Abolishing formal wear, maybe.

Most of the one hundred or so people milling around with signs were, like us, there to urge Obama, whom we generally support, to get moving on promises he made during his campaign. These would include ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act. The gathering felt more like a constructive criticism session than an angry, confrontational protest.

Then there were the people that I suspect show up at most events where the president might see them. These included an anti-war contingent, and some pro-life protesters. There was also a crazy van circling the block plastered with pictures of the twin towers burning, New Orleans under water, and the tsunami-ravaged coast of Samoa. Captions blamed all these things on gays. The rumor was that this van was driven by, if not Fred Phelps himself, then by some of his people. We were not able to confirm this, however, which is a shame, because there’s a guy I’d really love the opportunity to personally scream at.

We never did see the cast of Glee—they either got there very early or else they slipped in another entrance. But we did see the presidential motorcade, which was exciting.

I saw one other thing made it all worthwhile: Two women in dresses who just happened to be walking down the street asked Pipi and I what the crowd was all about. We told them it was a pro gay-rights protest, and they said that they supported us and wished us well.

That was a nice moment, but I probably would have forgotten about it right away if I hadn’t noticed them again about 10 minutes later. They had by this time somehow gotten ahold of a large rainbow flag, and were holding it up proudly as they marched around in a circle with a knot of protesters.

My gut feeling is that these two women were straight, but of course, it doesn’t matter. What I take from the encounter is that issues like gay marriage and defeating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell have a lot of mainstream support. Fifteen years ago, gay rights were the sole provenance of severely coiffed people who yelled a lot. Now we get help from sitcom stars and people on their way to cocktail parties.

They say love conquers all. Consider yourself warned, crazy van guy.

Renaissance Festival

Pipi’s 16-year-old cousin took us to Maryland for what was, remarkably, our first renaissance festival.

I admit that I was a little apprehensive. It’s not that I shy away from the nerdier things in life. I actually was worried that I wouldn’t be nerd enough. I had an idea that this would be a place where Dungeons and Dragons freaks and drama geeks would rule, making life difficult for anyone who didn’t have a costume or who doesn’t have perfect facility with Shakespearian insults. (I also just don’t have the build for the serving-wench look—this was also a concern.)

It wasn’t like that at all. William said that we weren’t expected to come in costume, so, like at least half the spectators, we didn’t. It soon became clear that the event was more about bawdy fun than historical accuracy. Just about everything else, though, was what I expected. There really was jousting (although nobody got knocked off a horse—disappointing); you really could purchase various bone-in, hand-held meats to gnaw on; and people really did address me as “M’lady.” There were lutes, and jesters, and all the runic knives anyone could ask for.

After about 15 minutes, when I realized nobody was going to yell at me for anachronistic dress and speech (and having noted that there were a wide variety of fried things for sale), I relaxed and enjoyed myself.

Forsooth.

Cute

One day Pipi and I went to the National Zoo with Pipi’s aunt. Highlights were the pandas (three of them!), a baby gorilla, and these little guys. They are Asian small-clawed otters, the world’s smallest otter species. They’re awfully cute, and if you like the still photo, you can watch them in action on the zoo’s otter cam.

Nellie’s

One other interesting find we made in D.C. was a gay sports bar. Who knew there was such a thing?

It’s called Nellie’s Sports Bar, and it’s located at 900 U Street, NW. It was in some ways very much like every sports bar I’ve ever been to, which is admittedly not that many. There were TVs everywhere, each tuned to a different channel. Every one seemed to be showing a mainstream sporting event. Really the only difference between what was going on here compared to a regular sports bar was that the set showing the men’s diving competition was getting the most attention.

One other difference is that the food was really good. They have the burgers, wings, and nachos you’d expect, but they also have a few South/Central American specialties, including empanadas and arepas. I’d never had, or even heard of an arepa, so I had to try it. The outside is something like a tamale casing, but chewier. This is folded over two fillings of your choice. I had ropa vieja and queso blanco in mine. It was like a Venezuelan cheese steak, served with fried plantains and sour cream.

I guess there were a few other differences between Nellie’s and conventional sports bars, but they were subtle. For instance, there’s bingo every Tuesday, but the caller is a drag queen. Card night is called “Pokerface,” after the Lady Gaga song. And they sponsor teams just like any other popular bar, but those teams have names like D.C. Divas and the Washington Wetskins.

To top it all off, I also determined that Nellie’s often shows women’s soccer games on TV, so now I officially like everything about Nellie’s. I know exactly where I’ll be going if I ever happen to be in Washington when there’s a big sports event going on.

Time out for Chocolate

For part of our trip, we stayed with my grandparents, and the other nights we spent at Pipi’s aunt’s house. Both families live in the Northern Virginia suburbs, so it was easy to get into Washington, D. C. during the day.

On one free day we went to the spy museum. This was fun, but a little bit overwhelming. Exhibits told the story of spying from biblical times until today, and I barely made it through the Cold War. My brain was full long before I got to cyberspying, so I’ll have to go back someday to find out how the Internet changed sleuthing.

Another fun discovery is the fact that Washington is a great chocolate city. We went to three different chocolate shops. The first one, Locolat wasn’t bad—I had very good hot chocolate and a yummy truffle—but the guy running the place was inexplicably cranky. How can you be in a bad mood surrounded by chocolate? Something strange was going on there.

The second place, Biagio Fine Chocolate, was a gourmet shop that carried some truffles (we were surprised to see our favorite Oakland chocolate maker, Michael Mischer, represented there), but it specialized in chocolate bars. They’re big on single-origin chocolate, and even bigger on free samples. They had a number of bowls out, each containing pieces of chocolate with various cocoa levels. We knew we were supposed to start with the mild stuff and work our way up to 85%, but Pipi’s cousin William discovered that if you taste one of the really intense dark squares and then eat one of the mild ones, it’s like popping butter into your mouth. This kept us amused for quite some time, but don’t worry, we did buy some.

ACKC Cocoa Gallery, which we went to the next day, sold not just house-made chocolates, but also chocolate drinks. It reminded us of our Australian obsession, Max Brenner. ACKC is located near Dupont Circle, and we spent the better part of an afternoon nursing caramel cocoa, buying rounds of chocolate, and just basking in the general fabulousness of the place.

(Yes, we managed to eat dinner both nights. We’re pros.)

Fort Belvoir

Fun fact: I was born on an army base (Fort Knox), but my family moved when I was only a few weeks old, and until just this month, I had not been on an active military installation in the intervening 39 years.

When Pipi and I were in Washington, D.C., my grandparents took us to see Fort Belvoir, in northern Virginia. I’m not sure we could have gotten onto the base on our own, and we almost certainly couldn’t have had coffee at the officers’ club without my grandfather, who was stationed at Fort Belvoir several times over the course of a long military career.

I thought we’d feel like imposters, but everywhere we went—the PX, the officers’ club, the parade ground where my grandfather used to march--we saw a lot of people in civilian clothing and contemporary haircuts. It was all far less mysterious and martial than I expected. It was almost disappointing how normal everything looked, but finding the familiar in the exotic is a big part of travel.

Back From Hiatus

I didn’t mean to take such a long break. I was getting ready for a trip to Washington, D.C. and somehow just didn’t get to my blog…for about three weeks. Anyway, I’m back now, back from D.C. and back from outer space. Posting should resume this week.