A Snowball's Chance

It took two months but we finally had our first REAL challenge getting everyone home from our adventure. We should have suspected such on Friday of a 3 day holiday weekend.

We knew we were in trouble when we checked in at the Eugene, Oregon airport. 2 out of our 3 flights home were written in screaming red. Let me define what the airline is telling us with the colors. Green means you've got half a chance to get on this flight. Orange means that if you like to gamble you might have a chance of making it but don't bet the farm. Red mean we overbooked and there's a snowball's chance in Hades that you're going to make it.

Over the past few weeks we've had good success gambling with orange. I got a bit over confident with orange. But when it came up red I knew it wasn't a good sign.

This trip home was Eugene to San Francisco, San Francisco to LAX, LAX to San Diego or Carlsbad (whichever was available). We made it out of Eugene easily- then the fun began.

At the San Francisco airport they have screens at each gate that list the standby passengers and the number of seats still available on the plane. We were numbers 13-17 with 23 seats when we arrived. Five minutes later we we still 13-17 with 13 seats left. It went downhill from there. Miraculously (because someone on the list didn't show up) they had two spaces. We had decided in advance that if we ever had to separate, Andy would go first with one child and I'd come on a later flight. This whole idea sounded to my chivalrous husband as an almost blasphemous idea since he prides himself on taking care of his family. Stranding his wife and child in a distant airport was to him like taking the life boat from the Titanic and letting us go down with the ship. I had to convince him that 1- he needs to be sure to get back to work on Saturday and B- I'm safer waiting in an airport than driving by myself if he has to be picked up late at night at LAX or Orange County. He agreed with my reasoning and took off with our daughter to LAX- leaving me and my son in a very over crowded San Francisco airport.

Now I'm a pretty independent woman- I can generally handle most of what life throws me. However, when he walked onto that plane I felt like I got kicked in the stomach. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I depend on him to handle the challenges when we travel.

Well the good news is I'm writing this on a plane to Orange County- my husband is in route from Carlsbad to pick us up. The bad new was that we tried unsuccessfully to get on 5 planes before this one. When you are standby number 25 with 1 seat available you know you're the proverbial Hades snowball. We were that snowball for 5 different planes- and we weren't picky. We would have taken a flight to LAX, San Diego, Carlsbad or Orange County.

We've got one more week until his temp position is done for the summer. We've got one more chance to try our luck. I think I'll pray for green flights. The snowball doesn't melt so fast when the flight is green.

Nothing Like the Feeling of Grit Between Your Teeth

A few weeks ago we spotted an adventure in a travel magazine while flying on one of our adventures. It fit within our very strict standards for potential activities....ok our standards aren't really that strict. At the beginning of our adventure we had one standard- it had to look fun. Now we have a second standard- it has to be cheap. So this activity fit those two exacting standards quite well. It looked REALLY fun and it was under $30 for the family.

We went sand boarding in Florence, Oregon. Sand boarding is a little bit like snow boarding. Let me compare the two.

With snowboarding you have your booted feet strapped onto a board and careen out of control down snow covered slopes; sandboarding is the same except replace the snow with sand and take off the boots.

In snowboarding you get a little snow down your coat; in sandboarding you get get a LOT of sand down your shirt, down your pants, in your pockets, in your ears and most delightful of all, in your mouth, where it grits when you put your teeth together. It's especially fun wearing a retainer- just ask our 15 year old daughter.

In snowboarding the snow melts and goes away; in sandboarding you discover sand the next day in places you missed while cleaning up, like the cuffs of the shorts you wore or the deepest parts of your ears.

In snowboarding you fall really hard and hit your head; the same goes for sandboarding. They say it doesn't hurt with sandboarding because the sand is so soft.... they lie.

In snowboarding they have a delightful invention called a lift which takes you effortlessly up to the top of the hill again; in sandboarding they have a delightful thing called legs, which might explain why we lasted 3 hours vs. all day snowboarding. However, I can proudly say we lasted longer than anyone else on the dunes that day- not bad for a couple of oldsters.

Snowboarding can be cold; sandboarding was delightfully not hot on the Oregon coast.

Snowboarding's expensive; sandboarding's cheap.

Both are really fun.

Both are easier if you are a 13 year old boy than his 45 year old mom.

Both leave me with extremely sore muscles the next day.

Both leave me wanting more, that is as soon as my legs quit hurting.

Here Come the Coackroaches

This week we invaded our friend Melissa in San Antonio. I'm sure it felt a little bit like being overrun by cockroaches. Melissa's husband was away for work so she was outnumbered 4 to 1. Our sheer volume is magnified exponentially as well so we probably sounded not 4 times as loud but 256 times as loud. Melissa is neat and no matter how hard I try to be neat, messes just create themselves around me. The same goes for my son, except worse. Plus my teenage son now eats constantly- and Melissa had snacks so he was doing his best impression of vermin and getting into her food non stop. So the fact that Melissa stayed good natured, laughing and pleasant the 3 days we were there was quite amazing to me. She actually said she enjoyed our visit, which I hesitantly believe because she's not inclined to lie just to make me feel better. Which leads me to my topic. Everyone should travel a little bit by the seat of their pants because it connects us with other human beings in ways that nothing else can.
It's humbling to invade someone else's house. It points out some real character flaws that you may not notice when you're at your own house. Our loudness, our lack of neatness and our constant consumption of food were the three most obvious in this particular trip. But it was also really cool to see that someone would take time off from work, pick us up from the airport in two separate trips, one after midnight, show us the town all day, feed us, let us play her video games and movies and take us back to the airport, all in the name of friendship. It's nice to have a friend willing to do all that- and still like us when the trip is over.
Traveling- this kind of traveling, not the "everything is worked out perfectly and there is no room for error" kind of traveling- increases my faith in humanity and my feelings of connectedness to the rest of the world. We've had countless people offer us directions, recommend great places to eat, help us find the right stop on the metro, and show tremendous kindness to our kids. One of my favorite memories is when an older Austrian gentleman complemented my son, calling him a gut man kinder (good young man), on the bus. It also increases the debt I feel to the rest of society. Seeing the kindness of others makes me want to be kinder too.
My husband tops the list in my book for kindness to strangers. I married up. Let me share a story that happened quite a few years ago. We were traveling on the freeway in San Diego and walking along the freeway was an older woman dragging a large suitcase. My husband stopped to see if her car had broken down or if he could be of assistance in some way. This woman, probably in her late 60s, had seen baby Shamu on TV and decided to come out to see him. She was able to afford the bus ride out and the ticket to Sea World but realized that she didn't have enough money to make it home- to Arkansas. She was going to walk all the way home. We were newly weds ourselves and didn't have much money, but my husband called his friend and together they got enough money together to get her a bus ticket back home. They got her to the bus station, bought her ticket and made sure she was safely on the bus. I guess that one incident alone earned them a lot of good karma points. We are still the recipient of that good karma, every time we travel.
And that is why I recommend that everyone travel. It makes for a small world where we realize that the little things that we do for other people really make a difference in the big picture, that we are all indebted to one another for our well being, and that we are really much more alike that we realize.
Thanks Melissa, for teaching me those lessons yet again.

It's raining.........Bugs!

It's hot and humid in DC on any August day- but we went on a cool day- only 85 degrees and humid enough to feel like you'd never completely dried from your shower. After dragging ourselves from the Capitol building to the National Archives to the White House we were tired and hot. We went to the National Mall and found a quiet, grassy place under a shade tree and quickly fell asleep (We'd taken the red-eye and our only sleep that night had been on the plane, need I say more). When were awakened by a low grumble and found that the weather had changed. The grumble was thunder. The sunny skies were gone, replaced by low, gray clouds. When we started seeing the lightening we decided it was time to move.
We were right next to the World War II memorial. In that part of The Mall there are no buildings. Our only hope of shelter was to walk the 6 city blocks to the Lincoln Memorial- We didn't make it.
The thunder roared and the torrents began.
At first we dashed from the protection of one tree to the next, which worked for a little while. When we got close enough to really see the memorial we realized that they were repairing the stairs and we would have had to make a long dash, unprotected, across the width of The Mall and the length of the stairs, with lightening bolts near and bathtubs of cool water falling from the clouds.
By this time the protection of the trees was no match for the volume of the buckets of water washing down on them. We were soaked through every layer of clothing- and to make matters more comical, we were carrying all of our possessions because we hadn't checked into our hotel yet. Everything we had was soaked through.
It was at this point that we realized that the torrent was not only washing us but the trees as well. It was washing the bugs out of the trees. There we stood, dripping water from every appendage and covered in newly cleaned bugs.
It was a completely miserable experience and we stood under that tree for 30 minutes, waiting for the rain to stop- drenched, covered in bugs, and laughing hysterically- delighted to be together creating a family moment we'll never forget.

The Endless Quest for a Cheap Hotel

I hate paying lots of money for a place to lay my head and shower in the morning. I never spend time at the hotel when I'm traveling. It makes no sense in my mind to travel 3000 miles and spend time at some non-descript building when there is always something new and interesting to see, do, taste or explore elsewhere.
I've looked into couch surfing- staying for fee at someone's place- but most of the people on the website are 20 somethings, mostly male, and it doesn't seem safe to do that with an attractive teenage daughter in tow. Hostels are out for the same reason, we're too old and she's too cute. So were stuck leeching off our friends or finding the cheapest hotel we can that promises to not give us infectious diseases or contribute to our untimely demise. This is the story of this week's lodging adventure.
On Expedia I found the cheapest hotel in the DC area. It was a Comfort Inn- a reputable chain- so I wasn't particularly thorough when checking the reviews, however they were mostly positive- no talk of cockroaches or biker bars next door. My biggest concern was being able to get there with public transportation.
I found the route- the metro from the Smithsonian to the end- then a quick 1 1/2 miles by bus- easy and cheap.
The DC metro is clean, efficient and inexpensive and seems safe enough. The metro ride went without a hitch. When we went to the bus stop we quickly noted that our ethnicity was in the minority. In fact, we were the lone representatives of said ethnicity. We were out of our element- but that can be a good thing- especially when trying to reinforce color blindness in our children. But despite our attempts to be color blind we stuck out from the crowd, getting a few strange looks from our fellow rider, who didn't seem to be as color blind as we were attempting to be. One nice lady guessed we were going to the Comfort Inn and told us where our stop was located. I'm sure our destination couldn't have been more obvious if we'd have tattooed in on our foreheads.
When we got to the hotel the most telling detail of the type of neighborhood was the front desk. Completely surrounding the entire front desk area was a bullet proof glass shield like you could find at a bank. Usually that isn't the best way to instill confidence in your guests- by protecting the hotel employees with an impenitrable barrier while leaving the rest of the hotel open to whomever wants to roam the halls.
However, despite the unwelcoming architectural addition, the room was clean, the staff was nice, the breakfast was fine, and we found out that the other guests were mostly European tourist who must have arrived by rental car. That mode of arrival would have given a completely different feel, in that the hotel was just off the freeway and you wouldn't have known about the neighborhood by seeing only one block of it. That is, if you didn't notice the 2 inch think glass barricade.

Santa Barbara and what is a cascarone?

We walked down the streets of Santa Barbara last week and found ourselves surrounded by many Hispanic women with stacks of thousands of colored chicken eggs. We live in San Diego county, my husband is of Mexican descent and we've been to our share of fiestas, eaten our share of carne asada and fish tacos, and broken pinatas at our children's birthday parties. We've attended quinceneras, both speak Spanish fluently, were once accused by a house guest of never eating a meal without tortillas, and know that Cinco de Mayo is mostly a celebration in the US used as an excuse to go to a Mexican restaurant and drink cervesas. But here was a new thing. I looked at Andy as said, "What's that all about." He didn't have a clue.
We eventually found out that what we'd observed were cascarones. A hollowed out chicken egg, filled with confetti and broken over the heads of unsuspecting friends and family for good luck. By the end of the day the streets of Santa Barbara were filled with confetti debris. We must have been in the luckiest place in all of California if good luck came for every egg broken. Most people had confetti-covered heads as well.
We had stumbled, unknowingly, upon Santa Barbara Old Spanish Days. We got to see dancers, eat Mexican food and listen to mariachis play La Bamba and La Cucharaca until we couldn't stand it anymore. We headed toward the water and stayed on the coast for a while. While the confetti was interesting and the music nice, the fun of being near the water is always where I'd rather be.
It was only a day trip so we quickly headed back to catch the bus back to the airport; a bit sunburned, tired from walking around all day and now educated in another tradition that we never knew existed.
So if someone busts an egg on your head- don't have them arrested for assault and battery- they only want to wish you good luck. Consider yourself loved.

Our way of thumbing our noses at $4 a gallon gasoline that has stomped on the ecomony and our jobs

The newest challenge to our trips is financial. While Andy and I have always attempted to travel inexpensively, when he took the job at United we were counting on his steady job to provide the funds for an occasional inexpensive hotel and rental car. This summer, the economy is so stinking that no one is spending money on pool construction or repair and his work has all but dried up. We're both looking for other work but in the mean time the great adventure continues. Not ones to be thwarted by something as unimportant as lack of money we've had to make a few changes to our travel plans. Even cheap hotels won't work and rental cars are a bit of a luxury we don't want to afford. Our new challenge is to go places with good public transportation or where we have friends to mooch a place on the floor. The last two weeks have been day trips, which eliminate the need for a hotel room.
This week was Monterey, CA. I love Monterey. I remember coming here once as a kid and loving it then. I love it even more now. We discovered that Monterey has a public transportation bus that picks you up for the airport and drops you off at a variety of stops downtown for $2 a rider. You just call and make an appointment and they show up in a mini bus right on time. The driver was great and told us of a couple of places to eat and even arranged to pick us up in the evening when we were heading home. It's called the DART system.
Kei went with us this time. She's a delight. We laughed the entire time and her artist eye is wonderful for the photography. She also loves seeing new things and is incredibly patient. We stood and watched sea lions for an hour. The goal this week was to walk along the coast and stay away from city stuff. We partially succeeded. We got lost in the morning at a wonderful French bakery that we just happened to walk past on our way to the coastline. It's easy to get lost in a French bakery.
We eventually were able to extricate ourselves from our pastries and headed down to the wharf. The seal lions in the bay barking, growling and biting at each other and the seals sunning themselves in the shallow water were a delight. Next time I want to rent a kayak and go out into the nature preserve that runs all along the coast.
We really did nothing of importance. We ate some food- including a shared Ghiradelli Sundae, and lots of samples of amazing clam chowder. We walked, laughed and took photos. It made me feel amazingly self indulgent and rich and the entire bill, except for the food (and you have to eat anyway) came to $12 ($4 each) for the bus.
I could get used to this.

I'm addicted

I love to fly. I love to be in a plane. There is nothing like it in the world and it's really amazing to witness the miracle of flight each time it happens.
I love the huge force of the engines as they try to push a multi ton chuck of metal up into the air. I love when the wheels first leave the ground and the bumpy ride becomes wonderfully smooth. I love the "clunk" as the wheels are tucked away inside the plane.
I love watching the cities I love, either San Diego or Carlsbad fade away. I love it even more when I fly in and see them again.
I love going through the clouds. I thrill at the idea of not seeing anything and knowing that the pilot can't either. I'm so thankful for the people in the towers and the instruments that make flying blind possible. I love getting above the clouds on an overcast day and being blinded by the brilliant white of the fluffy tops of the clouds. I'm amazed at their beauty each time it happens.
I love flying during the day and seeing quaint homes and green baseball diamonds or even better, patchwork quilts of farmed fields. I love flying at night even better and seeing large stretches of city lights. Even LA is glorious at night. I love flying by the coast and seeing the multitude of lights abruptly end in midnight blackness of the ocean.
I love watching lightning from a plane. A horrible Midwest thunder storm is the most beautiful sight I've even seen- when I'm not in it- and safely flying around it.
I get depressed when the person next to me closes the blind so I can't see out. Why would anyone choose an aisle seat. Access to the bathroom is nothing in comparison to watching miles and miles of earth and water float underneath.
Missing flights, running through airports, waiting for hours, not knowing if I'm going to make it home today or tomorrow- all that is worth it for that time in the airplane. I'm addicted.