¡Saludos!

Memorial Day

2011-01-15T20:51:00.038-06:00

It is Memorial Day weekend in Washington. The motorcycles of Rolling Thunder roar by occasionally. School is almost out. I have pictures of our travels flashing on my screen saver when I stop typing and stare dumbly at the screen for more than five minutes. I am so tired. There is nothing quite like teaching little kids to wring you out. But I have been thinking about all we have done, how we got to where we are now, and a little about what will happen next.

In three weeks, Hilary and I will be back in the Trinity Alps, camped next to a waterfall, five years after we got engaged there. I can't wait to be among the deer, the delicate dogwood flowers and to have the sound of the falls fill my ears. Six months after our engagement trip, on New Years Eve, we were married in Washington D.C. at the house of Hilary's Aunt Stephanie and her Uncle David, who through the power vested in him by the Universal Life Church, pronounced us man and wife. We had our reception in Marguerite and Tom Kelly's house, right above apartment I am sitting in now. Our families, friends, and the Federal Jazz Commission made it the most enjoyable night of my life.

Early the next morning I lay awake in bed at the Phoenix Park Hotel, after closing down the Dubliner, unable to sleep, filled with joy and ideas. Then as now I was thinking of the past and looking into the future. We had met in New York exactly a year before our wedding. We exchanged emails for eight months prior to that, brought together in the virtual world by a conspiracy of Hilary's friend Sydnee, my mother's friend Jacqui, and my mother herself. After that first meeting, we flew back and forth several times between Washington and San Francisco and I talked Hilary into moving to San Francisco in March. I proposed in June above a Trinity waterfall.

A little before dawn on New Year's Day, I began to imagine the future. My thoughts, like that waterfall, felt chaotic but beautiful and productive. The one thing I couldn't imagine was settling immediately into the same life as before. I felt that we were at an age where we needed to break away and spend some extensive time together, to have some sort of adventure, something we would hold on to, lean on, and tell our children about later in life.

When Hilary and I met, her brother, Tom, was gallivanting around the country as a Navy pilot in the Blue Angels demonstration team, so it was a long time before I met him in person. One of the first times we talked on the phone went something like this:

Tom: "Hi Mike, I have decided I want to send you to Patagonia as a wedding present."

Me: "Um...great. Wow. Thanks."

Tom: "Yeah, when I was in college, I had a subscription to the Trials of Life video series and there was this one in Patagonia where killer whales ride up on waves and snatch baby seals off the beach. It was amazing. I couldn't believe something like that really happened. I think you guys should go see it."

Patagonia had a similar pull on me because of a National Geographic article about it's harsh natural beauty and local gaucho culture. The idea of exploring the Patagonian Andes had been a latent dream in my head for years. As I lay in bed in the Penthouse Suite in a state that I imagine religious ecstasy must be like, my mind swirled with ideas. One of which came to me whole cloth: Why don't we quit our jobs, explore Patagonia, and make our way back to the States seeing as much of the Americas as we can? I even imagined moving to Washington on our return and renting an apartment from Tom and Marguerite.

And now here we are. Settled, working, and hoping to start a family.

But we have one more adventure to relate, crossing the continent a final time in a rental car. In August, we returned to Washington sticking to back roads and secondary highways. Our first stop was Servente's Saloon in Sonora, a great bar in the western foothills of the Sierra. We spent our first night on the eastern side in the quirky Victorian Hotel in Bridgeport, near the ghost town of Bodie and close to the Nevada border.

The following day we crossed Nevada on Route 50, the Loneliest Road in America, a wonderful stretch of emptiness, 400 miles of scrub desert and a few starkly beautiful mountain ranges. That night we camped high in oddly verdant Great Basin National Park. In the morning we took a hike through a bristlecone pine forest out to a rock glacier. Bristlecone pines are said to be the world's oldest living things, some exceeding 5,000 years. When they finely do die, they leave exquisite skeletons of rock-hard wood set in grasping poses that seem to express the audacity of their attempted permanence.

Later in the morning we stopped into nearby Lehman Cave and admired its stalagmites, stalactites, and cave bacon. Delicious cave bacon.

From Nevada we went through southern Utah, passing through the gorgeous Capitol Reef National Park, crossing the Colorado River at sunset, and camping in Natural Bridges National Monument. We set up our tent under a terrific lightning show. The next morning we visited the Dinosaur Museum of Blandings. It was the perfect mixture of science and whimsy: fossils, models, and educational plaques housed side-by-side with movie posters and the brontosaurus model used to film the original King Kong.

After the dinosaurs, we paid a visit to the remains of the human ancients of Mesa Verde, Colorado. These people, ancestors of the Pueblos, lived for a short time (about 100 years) in caves under the high plateaus of the region, leaving impressive stone architecture and us moderns in awe.

That night we stayed in Durango and the next day we drove through the San Juan Mountains, stopping briefly at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison before descending into my former hometown of Boulder to visit our friend Lauren. The next day we walked through my old neighborhood and found my old school unused and in some disrepair. The cover of a time capsule I remember being installed lay on the floor. Its contents are still cemented into the wall, ordered not to be opened until 2030. We walked by my old house and wandered along the creek where I used to play as a kid. I felt old and somehow it all seemed unreal. Was it really I who had played along that creek?

In the afternoon we slipped out across the plains stopping in Kit Carson, Colorado and staying at the Wyatt Earp Motel in Dodge City. We saw our first police in days on Rt. 50 in Kansas and Hilary was promptly nabbed for speeding.

From Kansas we dropped down into Oklahoma and headed east. We found Oklahoma surprisingly pleasant. That night we crossed into Arkansas and camped in the Ozark mountains.

The next morning we had breakfast at one of the most charming cafes we have ever seen, in an old general store in Oark. We spent much more time in the Ozarks than we expected. We got lost on roads not in our atlas and our rental car's GPS was even less use than usual. But it was all worth it. The Ozarks feel magically lost in time.

We crossed Arkansas and rolled into Memphis in the evening. We ate and drank on Beale Street and the next morning visited the Civil Right Museum in the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was shot. It was as impressive as it was heartbreaking. We soothed ourselves somewhat at Leonard's BBQ, recommended by Ma and Pa Benson.

We crossed Tennessee on a southern trajectory over a couple days stopping in Chattanooga for fireworks and then heading north and crossing the Smokey Mountains. We made the rest of our way home on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive through Appalachia. The weather was rainy and overcast but it was pleasant if seemingly endless. If you are ever in Fancy Gap, Virginia stop in the Lakeview Motel & Restaurant there and order the catfish. You will not be disappointed.

And so we ended almost two years of travel and the closest thing most people ever get to pure freedom. At first, Hilary was fairly skeptical of the idea, even resistant. The idea of not working appalled her. She thought we would be just drifting around wasting our time. I tried to convince her that we would learn and grow more by traveling together than any other way. I told her we had to have stories to tell our children. "Nobody, on their deathbed, says, 'Boy I wish I had only worked more,'" I assured her.

In January, on a school night, I lay down to sleep and was overcome by a horrible feeling in my chest. It felt as if I had a small but angry rodent bouncing around in there. I checked my pulse and it was rapid and all over the place. I ran out to Hilary who called 911. While we waited I was sure I was having a heart attack and might die.

I was taken to the hospital and was assured I was not dying. I was in atrial fibrillation, the non-lethal cousin to ventricular fibrillation. Uncomfortable, but not serious. After hours of less drastic treatments, however, they decided to zap me with the defibrillator to convert my heart back into a normal rhythm. The nurse hooked me up to the defibrillator pads and left to prepare a sedative/painkiller cocktail for me. In the meantime a tech came in to do a routine check of the machines in the room. Suddenly she flipped a switch and lit me up. I heard a faint hum and then it felt like my chest had been blown open with TNT. I flew up in the bed and started shouting, "What the hell is the matter with you? Are you crazy?"

All the doctors and nurses poured into the room and surrounded me as I gripped my chest. There were a few beats of silence, everyone's mouth agape, while they figured out what had happened. Finally one of them looked up at the heart monitor and said, "Well...it worked."

"Can I still get that sedative?" I asked, still in shock. Everyone was very apologetic and within a few minutes we were laughing about it.

It is not a great feeling, thinking you are about to die, but it does clarify some things. I know that there is nothing I regret less than marrying Hilary and crossing two continents with her. I would do it again tomorrow.

Benson Lake

2010-11-28T13:19:00.029-06:00

It is Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend. It is dark early and Hilary is working. I am contemplating with some trepidation another week of teaching and wondering why we haven't finished this blog yet. I know part of it is my work schedule. I feel like a new teacher again, usually working more than ten hours a day and planning on the weekends. But I think it also has something do with not being able to face the end of our story, after traveling for almost two years and living with such freedom. It is hard to give it up. Writing it down gives it an awful finality. Still, we have a few more stories to tell, and it makes no sense to drag it out forever.

Before leaving California we went backpacking one last time, in what John Muir called the Range of Light, with Mike Grafton and Scott Mattoon. We spent 8 days in the northeastern corner of Yosemite National Park. Our destination was Benson Lake. The lake was beautiful but had an adjoining mosquito-infested swamp that made it less than ideal for camping. Things turned from beautiful to amazing, however, when we left the trail for several days of bushwhacking. Hilary found what we think is a prehistoric stone knife, and we camped one of the nights in a high valley overlooking mostly frozen Rock Island Lake. It was surrounded by snow and completely unspoiled. It seemed we were the year's first of the few that make it there.

The pictures tell a better story than I can.

Looking at these pictures I realize how much I miss the western mountains and Mike and Scott; I feel like I didn't appreciate them enough when I was there.

California!

2010-09-10T12:51:00.037-06:00

We spent the summer in San Francisco, not nearly the coldest winter ever - it was remarkably temperate and even hot. For three weeks Aunt Cob & Uncle Mark indulged our vagrant ways with a bed and many wonderful meals and talks. When Pam and David arrived in May we relocated to their house on Clay Street and settled in for reading, eating, socializing, and doing it all again the next day. We also got to meet many of the adorable children born while we were traveling.

We had two weddings to attend this summer: On June 5 Sean and Sasha got married outside Iowa City and we traveled there via Kansas City with Julie, Kevin and Venice. Mike's brother Tom married Corynn in San Francisco on June 19 which meant a round of preparatory crafts weekends, family gatherings and a wonderful wedding.

We closed out our summer with a farewell party at Clay Street and a get-together at the Pig & Whistle.

After a luxurious summer of wonderful friends, excellent eating, and great enjoyment we loaded up a rental car, said goodbye to beautiful San Francisco, and set out for the mysterious East.

Heading West

2010-07-22T16:19:00.028-06:00

In late April, despite his misgivings about helping us continue to shirk work, Hilary's brother Tom invited us to join him on his move from Norfolk, Virginia to Monterey, California. In Monterey he would be spending six months learning French at the Defense Language Institute before heading to Paris to study at their War College (insert surrender joke here). He rented a giant Penske truck the color of the sun to accommodate the three of us with his Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the back and his 1970 Mustang convertible, known as the Blue Bomber, on a trailer.

On our first day we went through Maryland and crossed West Virginia and Ohio to Cincinnati where Tom and Hilary spent several years of their childhood, while their mother was working for The Cincinnati Post. We stayed with their friends Albert and Deborah who treated us like family. Their daughter, Mary, joined us for dinner, but I stupidly forgot to get a picture of her. She has been one of the most faithful readers of this blog.

The next day we visited Albert at the Mercantile Library where he is director. It is a beautiful subscription library founded in 1835 for young working people wanting to improve their minds. It is still only 45 dollars a year to join. It has commanding views of the city, a large collection of books and magazines, spine melting chairs, amusing statues, and the kind of pervading peace and quiet that feel like heaven to a city dweller.

We also visited the art deco Post building, Tom and Hilary's old neighborhood Mt. Adams, and the charming downtown where we had lunch at Arnold's, an old-fashioned place with a bathtub on the second floor that was used to make gin during Prohibition. It made us wish we had more time to explore.

We left Cincinnati that afternoon and crossed Indiana and Illinois without much to report. Western Illinois was pretty grim. We were shooting to stay in Galesburg, but when we arrived the only motel we saw was boarded up and the only real restaurant was named Crappy's. As we were leaving town on a back road, we passed a promising looking roadhouse. The three of us leaned forward as a unit to read the name...Crappy's North. We slowly settled back into the Penske's bench seat, shaking our heads, and rode on to Moline where we stayed in a hotel near the Mississippi.

The following day we crossed through the northeastern corner of Iowa, past neatly kept fields and cheerfully painted barns and silos. We stopped at the National Farm Toy Museum and the Field of Dreams, a wonderfully non-commercial place, especially considering its Hollywood origins. There is no charge to visit and they let Tom and me hit fly balls to each other. A friendly and talkative woman was selling postcards and t-shirts. She told us about the place and about the progress of her daughters, one of whom was studying in Montevideo, Uruguay. Finally we got back on the road heading for Minnesota and feeling relaxed, refreshed, and impressed by Iowa.

That evening we stayed with Tom's friend from flight school, Scott, his wife, Tami, and their three adorable kids, Reagan, David, and Ted.

Over the next two days we crossed Minnesota and South Dakota, stopping at the underwhelming Pipestone National Monument, the somewhat silly Corn Palace, the breathtaking Badlands, and the snowy, nearly invisible Mount Rushmore.

We headed into Wyoming planning to go through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons but it turned out to be too early in the season. Most of the roads were closed, and we didn't relish the idea of driving the Penske through a full-blown snowstorm. Instead we drove up into Montana and spent the night in Billings at the Dude Rancher Lodge (thank you Ria!). Billings had good food and a nice wine bar where Jeremy the bartender made us feel right at home, introducing us to some delicious Australian reds with racy labels.

We continued on through Bozeman, across the mountains, and stayed the night in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. We then crossed the southeastern corner of Washington into Oregon, followed the Columbia River to Portland, and then headed south to Coos Bay (passing a bar advertising "good drinks, fine food, and fancy ladies") where we stayed with our friend Jake, his wife Stephanie, and their 6 month old son, Wiley. Wiley is cute, good natured, and gigantic. He is the size of a kid a year older.

From Coos Bay we went south along the Oregon coast, through the redwoods of northern California, and down to Marin County where we reunited with our friends Sue and Ronan well into the evening. I again foolishly forgot to take pictures.

We crossed the bridge into San Francisco the next morning but went on to Monterey to move Tom into his new digs. The following day we blasted back up to San Francisco in the Blue Bomber with the top down, and into the loving home of Hilary's Aunt Colette, Uncle Mark, and cousin Isaac. There Hilary and I came to rest for a few weeks to start our summer in San Francisco. Hilary had accepted a job at Georgetown University Hospital starting in August and prospects looked good for a job for me as well, so we were able to look forward to catching up with friends and family and continuing to shirk work with a minimum of angst.

Thanks Tom, for a wonderful trip and an opportunity to see more of las Américas.

Christopher Walken Was in Love with My Mother

2010-07-13T13:35:00.031-06:00

My mother, Lee, died when I was less then five years old, while we were living in New York City. One of the few connections I still have to her is my friend Ginna who was my mother's best friend in high school. They were also friends with a boy by the name of Ronnie Walken, now known as Christopher.

While we were in Washington Christopher Walken was starring in A Behanding in Spokane on Broadway and Ginna generously invited me up to see it. I took one of the speedy and comfortable Chinatown buses and got off at Penn Station. I had some time to wander around Manhattan before meeting Ginna. I walked up to Central Park and on the way back I ran into our friends Sean (aka Swordfish) and Sasha from San Francisco. Amazing. I had a glass of wine with them and then met Ginna for dinner at a wonderful Broadway place famous for its burgers and people watching.

The play was panned by the New Yorker but I rather enjoyed it. The acting was great and Christopher Walken was hysterical. After the show we were allowed back stage and Christopher stopped and talked with us for a few minutes. His mannerisms were what you would expect but toned down. His eyes, however, had none of the creepy chill you see in the movies. They were surprisingly kind with a hint of impish humor.

I asked him about my mother and he told me that she was the smartest girl in the school and that she was very beautiful. "I really liked her," he said, winking. It was a strange moment but nice and we both laughed. It was good to know that she is still there in this familiar stranger's head. For a moment I could see her the way he had seen her 50 years ago.

I stayed with Ginna, her husband Frank, and their friendly poodle on the Upper East Side. The next day I headed back to Washington but I had a little more time to take pictures and to soak up New York in all its chaotic beauty. My family left New York about a year after my mother died but I still feel it in me. There is no other place in the world like it, though you can see pieces of the whole world in it.

Gadding about on the East Coast

2010-06-09T19:37:00.075-06:00

We have never aspired to be real-time bloggers but I notice that the dateline on our last post is March. March! Now in late July we have some catching up to do: In this post, our whirlwind tour up the east coast, Easter in DC, Nationals' Opening Day, and Tom's moving out party in Norfolk. Picking up where we left off (in March!) we traveled north from our cozy B&B in New Orleans. (If you have any reason to go to the Big Easy consider Sue Repasky's place at 133 N. Hennessey Street. Her email is suerepasky@yahoo.com and she is an outstanding host with beautiful accommodations.)

Our Amtrak trip to DC took about 24 hours. We had no sleeper compartment but are well-accustomed to sleeping where we sit. We moved in to my mom's place on E Street NE and got down to the job search. Marguerite Kelly, the unimpeachably practical, introduced Mike to a contact at a bilingual elementary school where (after jumping through the District's flaming hoops) he will be teaching second grade this fall. I have a job on the kidney transplant floor at Georgetown University Hospital to start in August.

We pruned Mom's thorny pyracantha and tried to make ourselves useful. We celebrated Aunt Steph's birthday. Mike went to New York to meet Christopher Walken. While in New York he ran into our friends Sean (aka Swordfish) and his fiancée Sasha. Here I find a moment to explain that 'Swordfish' was the nom de espionage of Sir Roderick Glossop, P.G. Wodehouse's eminent brain specialist. Sir Roderick assumed the name while impersonating a butler in an attempt to assess the sanity of one Wilbur Cream. Sean became Swordfish at Kevin & Julie's wedding, probably in the capacity of bearer of Kev-tinis.

From Washington we took the train to Baltimore to help my Aunt Jen with her move from Bolton Hill, then the bus to New York to stay the night with the Tamarkins and their adorable son Jay. Jake & Lis gave us wonderful things to eat and drink.

The next day we took the train to New Haven for lunch with Jeff and Dave, both of the New Haven Police Department. We joined them, their wives Steph and Liz (who are both parole officers), and their kids for a couple of pies at Modern Apizza, still Mike's preferred pizza excepting his mother's. Mike's dad joined us and then drove us to home to Connecticut.

Modern's:

Pam's:

We had a woodsy walk in Mansfield with David and then drove with Pam to Duxbury, MA to visit Mike's grandmother. Eleanor had broken her arm recently but she is gamely getting around with the use of a walker adapted to her reconfigured wrist. She is also under the watchful supervision of caretakers, most notably the stalwart Francine. We also visited Mike's grandfather's grave in Duxbury.

While Pam took Eleanor to a doctor's appointment in Plymouth Mike and I visited Plymouth Rock in the rain. Plymouth Rock is overhung by a neo-classical granite gazebo, reminding me that Lincoln's log cabin in Springfield is contained in a Parthenon-like structure. There is something touching in the tricking out of simple and purely American artifacts in Doric columns and dentils, elevating the humble Plymouth Rock to the status of an altar to the gods.

(The last two photos are from the Wikipedia entry on Plymouth Rock.)

From Duxbury we enjoyed a couple nights at the Benson pied-à-terre in Allston and then rented a U-Haul to drive some of my stepfather's things down to DC from his house in Cambridge. Bill's lecture to his Harvard class that evening was on religious conspiracies.

We also visited Michael Kelly's grave at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Max and the Young Walruses designed the remarkable and recently installed gravestone.

Our last night in Boston we visited Mike and Betsy Pacinda in Auburndale and got to see their boys, Thomas and Will.

Back in DC we celebrated Easter at the Deutsches', including Zoë on leave from Brooklyn, Claire on leave from Afghanistan, and Josh on leave from a very fulfilling black box. We also had Zoë's friend Daniela who was working in DC; and our friend Ria, freshly returned to DC from long travels in the Middle East. (You can see Ria's old blog posts here: http://riaincairo.blogspot.com.) DC springtime was in full bloom for the occasion.

On April 5 my brother had set up tickets for the Nationals' Home Opener against Philly. The stadium was packed with Phillies fans and it goes without saying that the Nats lost. But we did get the President throwing out the opening pitch, complete with Nationals' jacket and White Sox cap.

For our final East Coast jamboree my cousin Chris, Mike, and I drove down to visit Tom in Norfolk. My brother is off to study French for 6 months in Monterey, CA prior to moving to France to attend le Collège Interarmées de Défense. Mais oui, bien sûr! Tom made a delicious dinner for us and his friends Katherine, Dave, and Patrick. And then the four of us danced around his apartment for hours. We had a really good time.

Here is our final hurrah with packs on.

At the end of April we rolled out of DC in a big yellow Penske truck, joining Tom on his cross-country move to Monterrey. To be discussed in October...

Home Again, Finnegan

2010-03-19T19:54:00.032-06:00

It is funny how little expressions from people you love lodge themselves in your head and continue to surface and pass your own lips years after they are gone. "Home again, Finnegan," my grandmother would say each time we entered her house in San Francisco after an outing. Lord knows what it means, but I find myself mouthing it now and then, even on the doorsteps of hostels we have stayed in less than a week.

Growing up, my family stayed with my grandmother during the summers and at Christmas. She was like a third parent to my brothers and to me. After college I lived with her before finding my own apartment, and returned when I took a chance on a low-paying job working with children.

One evening that year my grandmother caught a bad cold. The next morning my brother, John, also living with her at the time, found her dead from a heart attack. I was tormented by the feeling that as a selfish twenty-four year old I never showed her how much I loved her. I had treated her as if she would live forever. On the other hand, my grandmother hated hospitals and going to the doctor. Even a day in the ICU would have been a hell on earth for her. The suddenness of her death was tragic for me but ideal for her.

Since that time I have felt a deep importance in the end of things. The meaning of a thing usually isn't clear until its end and its emotional significance is strongly colored by its ending. Goodbyes, moves, the last day of school, leaving a job, death. These things and how we deal with them can define our lives.

So how does one end the trip of a lifetime? I don't have a full answer just yet. I do know it feels wonderful to do what we set out to do: to return from the tip of South America entirely on the ground, spending every day of nearly fifteen months together, feeling closer to each other than ever.

It was great also to roll across the border and into the home of our old friends the McGregors. We took a bus directly from Monterrey, Mexico to San Antonio, Texas making stops only at the border (for an entire bus x-raying) and a bright, shiny Burger King (there are some things I haven't missed).

Matt and Bridget picked us up at the bus station and took us home to see their lovely and entertaining girls, Maeve and Sloane. Maeve was still a baby when I last saw her and Sloane was born during our trip. The McGregor family makes parenthood look like fun. I hope we can follow in their footsteps shortly.

Soon we were joined by Mike Garza, the legendary Sweet Mike. There is not room for an airing of his exploits here, as even a hundred blogposts could not do them justice. I have come to think of him as a sort of modern Don Quixote, and while I would love to be his Cervantes, there is not time for that now. But he lived up to his nickname and he and the McGregors made us feel that we were home.

San Antonio is an interesting place with a long history, perhaps not compared with Peru, but certainly compared to Houston. We took the WPA built Riverwalk to the unforgettable Alamo and enjoyed its collection of Bowie knives, learning that James Bowie, a hero of the Alamo, debuted his eponymous knife at the notorious "Sand Bar Fight" near Natchez, Mississippi in 1827. We also got our first taste of the Tea Party. I prefer coffee.

We only had a few days in Texas so we spent the majority of it just enjoying the company of Matt, Bridget, and Mike and being entertained by the girls. Luckily San Antonio has a progressive bar culture with many catering to families. One even had a jungle gym. We sat for a while in the bar at the Menger Hotel drinking in its rich history. It was there that Theodore Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders for the Spanish American War. We also visited the beautiful Veterans of Foreign Wars bar further down the Riverwalk which advertises itself as the Oldest Post in Texas. There we met Guillermo, a friendly if troubled veteran, who appears to have posted himself there since the end of the Vietnam War.

We finally had to say good bye to our friends at midnight to join Amtrak's Sunset Limited out to New Orleans.

We spent three nights in New Orleans at a B&B in midtown in the house of a woman named Sue who treated us like old friends. We ate oysters and po boys, saw some jazz, and took a short troll down Bourbon Street following the Italian-American parade. We also walked through back areas of the Garden District and in City Park, full of live oaks, magnolias, and waterfowl.

New Orleans still bears scars from Katrina and there is a stillness outside of the French Quarter that is a little eerie and sad, but its unique flavor remains and we have heard that almost three quarters of its residents have returned. New Orleans lives on.

On Sunday night we joined Sue's "Bridge Club," a group of her friends who set up lawn chairs on the pedestrian bridge over St. John's Bayou and drink wine. I've been to New Orleans several times, including for a bachelors' weekend before the McGregor wedding, so I have lots of little impressions that make up New Orleans in my mind. There was a moment sitting on the bridge, the bayou lit up with the fiery red light of sunset, the taste of red wine on my lips and the cool air ringing with laughter, as one of Sue's friends, a nearly blind artist and native of New Orleans, did a dead-on impression of Louis Armstrong telling jokes. That's New Orleans.

Sue had a beautiful old golden retriever named Clipper who was dying of bone cancer. I think it might be possible to gauge the goodness and happiness of an old person's life in the kindness of their eyes and the ease of their demeanor. If I am right and the same is true of dogs, then Clipper had the best and happiest of lives.

As the sun rose over Lake Pontchartrain at the beginning of our twenty-six hour train ride to Washington D.C. I struggled with a bit of melancholy thinking about Clipper and our trip. Such wonderful things coming to an end.

Fortunately we still have some traveling to do before settling down. We have been seeing a bit of the east coast while looking for jobs in Washington. In a few weeks we will complete the circle, returning to San Francisco on a road trip with Hilary's brother Tom who is moving to Monterey to learn French.

My parents still own my grandmother's house and Hilary and I plan to stay there until my brother, Tom's wedding in June. I know just what I will say when I open the door.

Last post from south of the border!

2010-03-15T10:37:00.053-06:00

It was sad to say goodbye to our cozy apartment and new friends in Guanajuato and we can't recommend the town and Casa Bertha highly enough. But after our usual wistful musings -- "We could just stay here and teach...", we decided to keep going.

Zacatecas is a few hours north of Guanajuato and similarly located in a high sided valley with little streets running up the hills. It is a mining town and was one of the richest cities in New Spain. Two rocky outcroppings rise high on either side of the valley and a teleférico or gondola runs between them. On our walk up to the gondola we met Antonio Zelaya, a very young looking 84 year old who sat on a corner enjoying the chilly but sunny day. He stopped us to find out what we thought of Zacatecas and told us the secrets of his youthfulness: wine, cigars and beautiful women.

On the gondola we met Jose Luis and Angelín who were visiting from Mexico City. After chatting with them for 10 minutes they extracted a bar of Zacatecas chocolate from Angelín's purse and insisted that we accept it from them. On Cerro de la Bufa at one end of the teleférico there are equestrian statues of Pancho Villa and two generals of the revolution, Felipe Ángeles and Panfilo Natera. One of the revolution's bloodiest battles took place here in 1914 when Pancho Villa's troops stormed the federal stronghold on La Bufa.

We did a lot of walking through the city's neighborhoods, exploring parks and churches. In the Iglesia San Agustín we encountered an exhibit enjoining Mexicans to Know Your Military. In the Museo Rafael Coronel we ran across a great collection of masks from all parts of Mexico and housed in a beautiful old convent.

From Zacatecas we set out for Monterrey, our last stop in Mexico. Monterrey is wealthy and modern and quite close to the U.S. border. However, a big Mexican folk dancing festival and the delicious roast baby goat (a local specialty) kept everything feeling more Mexican than not.

On our last day in Monterrey we explored the Parque Fundidora. This is a huge city park built on what was once industrial land. The designers kept some of the old smokestacks and other industrial structures giving the place a vaguely apocalyptic feel. Fortunately they also arranged for lots of grass and fountains and the park is a lovely place in which to wander.

On our last morning in Mexico we had a convivial breakfast near our hotel at the Cafe San Pedro. Rosy, Linda and Alicia served us good food and were eager to hear about our travels. It was bittersweet to sum up the past 14 months on our last day but our friends' enthusiasm and wonder were good reminders of what a remarkable journey it has been.

Guanajuato

2010-02-24T17:45:00.040-06:00

Oh baseborn scoundrel! Ill-mannered, vulgar, ignorant, ill-spoken, foul-tongued, insolent, and audacious backbiter! Do you dare utter such words in my presence and in the presence of these distinguished ladies? How dare you conceive such rude and insolent thoughts in your muddled imagination? Leave my presence, monster of nature, treasury of lies, storehouse of deceits, depository of rascalities, inventor of mischiefs, publisher of follies, enemy of the respect due to royalty! Begone! Never appear before me, on pain of my wrath. -- Miguel Cervantes (Don Quixote to Sancho Panza)

Guanajuato is steeped in Cervantes. It has a three week Cervantes festival every October. Its streets are full of statues and other allusions to Don Quixote and his faithful squire. There is an entire museum dedicated to paintings and sculptures of their likenesses. When you get to know Guanajuato you can see why. It is the most quixotic of cities, improbable, enchanting, and beautiful.

Guanajuato seems to have no plan and to make no sense. It is built along a narrow valley in the geographical center of Mexico. Its attractive, sometimes bizarre, multicolored buildings seem piled on top of each other, lining streets that wind up the steep hills, often turning into meandering stairwayed alleys. Not one street is straight. But wandering through them is like wandering through an intricate but lovely fairy tale or a story by Jorge Borges or Italo Calvino. It is a labyrinth, made even more complex by a series of stone tunnels that snake about under the city. Here the traffic flows where the diverted rivers once did. It is like something an ingenious child, possibly headed for schizophrenia later in life, might build out of Legos.

It is also a city with interesting history. It was built on the wealth of one of the world's great silver mines. Father Miguel Hidalgo ignited the Mexican war of independence in the nearby village of Dolores, 200 years ago, with an incendiary speech know as El Grito de Dolores (The Cry of Dolores). He soon led his troops to Guanajuato where the Spanish troops barricaded themselves in a grain storage building called the Alhóndiga de Granaditas. They were finally overcome when a miner, nicknamed Pípila, wearing a stone slab on his back as armor from bullets, rushed the Alhóndiga and set the doors ablaze, allowing the revolutionaries to storm the place. The Alhóndiga is now a museum with plaques on each corner where the Spanish hung the heads of important captured revolutionaries, including Hidalgo's. A strange modern statue to Pípila with torch in hand watches over the city with the inscription: "Aun hay otras Alhóndigas por incendiar" (There are still other Alhóndigas to burn).

Not only is Guanajuato a magical maze-like city but we found a magical maze-like hostel, the Casa Bertha, owned and run by the smiley brothers Juan and Jorge. We rented a small apartment, cooked most of our meals, and stayed more than a week. It was wonderful to feel like we had a home again, even for a short time.

The homelike atmosphere was enhanced by the quality of the people staying there. The oldest, Oz, is a physicist in his 80s, born in Germany, with a wide range of interests. The youngest, Isang, is a bright and mature 22. She is studying Spanish and preparing to bike from Seattle, Washington to Washington D.C. for the American Lung Association. Check out her websites: isangsbikeride.com and mas2186.wordpress.com.

We spent a lot of time with Lyall and Josh, two guys from the States, about our age who quickly seemed like old friends. We also became close with Terry and Diana from Vancouver and Dan from North Dakota. We enjoyed several afternoons and evenings up on the deck overlooking the city, talking with them about everything from politics to mining (Terry is a retired mining engineer).

These are pictures from Jorge's birthday party:

The area around Guanajuato is beautiful as well. We spent a couple days exploring with our friends from the hostel. On the first we walked up to the holy miradors (peaks with crosses) with fantastic views of the city. The next, we walked four hours along a dirt road to the small town of Santa Rosa, passing through other small mining towns and meeting several animals. We had a delicious meal in Santa Rosa before returning by bus.

On Saturday night Terry and Diana invited us to join them at a Cervantes play held in the plaza in front of one of Guanajuato's churches. We didn't understand much but the costumes were spectacular and the actors were excellent physical comedians. A few times actors would enter the "stage" on horseback. There was even a sword fight.

Later Josh took us to a great live music venue called Zilch, owned by Michael from Worcester, Mass. who also plays cello in the Guanajuato Symphony. The band played powerful funk and jazz. All the musicians were great but the trumpeter, the drummer, and the bassist stood out. One of the solos by the trumpeter started out with weird, low, flatulent sounds and built to ecstastic war blasts. Fantastic.

We had been to Guanajuato before when we came to Mexico for Fay and Jeff's wedding at a nearby hacienda. We had wanted to hit a real Mexican cantina and picked a place with swinging doors with the letters FBI cut into them. Hilary walked in first and started to greet the bartender in her (then) very limited Spanish, when I saw the exposed urinal on the wall next to the bar and decided our company wasn't desired. I put my hand on her shoulder and led her back out.

It turns out to have been a mistake. Josh and Lyall took us to the Famoso Bar Incendio and it turned out not only to welcome women but to be one of the friendliest bars in Latin America. Each time we met several locals and were always greeted with smiles. On our final night we met a political science student named Juan Pablo and his friends Diego and "Taliban". When the bar closed we went back to their student digs and kept the party going until the wee hours. A forty year-old shouldn't try to keep up with college students, but we couldn't resist. Lyall, Hilary, and I walked home after two in the morning barking back at the neighborhood dogs.

The next day, Hilary and I left for Zacatecas feeling a bit like the Knight of the Rueful Figure after one of his less successful sallies or Sancho Panza after his blanketing, and missing our little home in Guanajuato.

Morelia

2010-02-22T15:57:00.026-06:00

We thought we'd stop by Morelia for a day or two, expecting one more colonial city. It is one more colonial city and it is gorgeous, full of beautiful plazas, usually with a lovely old church rising above them. We stumbled on numerous street celebrations, mostly involving heart-shaped balloons for Día de Amor y Amistad, and there were Saturday night fireworks from the roof of the cathedral. We ate well and wandered through the round of churches and museums, luxuriating in our last few weeks of Mexico. Anyone stopping by Morelia, we recommend the cosy local bar Revolucion 1910 and the birrireria (for goat tacos) a few doors down.

A few days later we caught the bus to Guanajuato and got a glimpse of Lago de Cuitzeo from the window.

Las Mariposas Monarcas

2010-02-12T17:00:00.034-06:00

One of my favorite kids' books is Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary. When I taught fourth grade, we read it every year. One reason I like it so much is that it made my whole class interested in monarch butterflies. The book is set in Pacific Grove, California near Monterey where there is a small stand of trees that fills with monarchs every winter. My friend and former colleague Pauline and I visited them when we were in Monterey for a math conference and were enchanted. They hang in the trees in big bunches and when the sun shines they fill the air with swirling, flapping, orange light.

Still the experience in Pacific Grove did not prepare me for what we saw on Cerro Pellón, part of the Reserva de la Biosfera de la Mariposa Monarca near Zitácuaro, a few hours from Mexico City. I am lousy at estimating vast numbers but I am sure there were millions of butterflies, maybe hundreds of millions. They weigh down the tall fir trees in huge clumps, they fill the air and cover the ground. You can hear their combined flapping and it sounds like wind or waves or fire. Most insect swarms are horrifying, but a swarm of monarchs is something joyous, fascinating, bordering on the divine.

We spent the night before in Zitácuaro, a friendly town with delicious bread. We stayed at the comfortable Hotel América run by Abel Rivera, a very sweet and helpful man, who instead of trying to get us involved in some sort of tour, told us the best way to get out to the butterflies by public transportation. We made it to the bottom of the mountain by nine and hired a compulsory guide named Pascual. He was nice enough, but after he told us that Cerro Pellón was 10,000 meters high I stopped asking him a lot of questions.

He took us to a beautiful mountain meadow in a pass below the peak where we set up our tent. In October when the butterflies first arrive in Mexico they would have been above our meadow, but now in February they have moved lower. We walked back down with Pascual, who left us at the the trail to the hollow where the butterflies had congregated. He offered to come get us in the morning but we told him not to bother. That night when we got back to camp our headlamps and some food were missing. We didn't see anyone else that day except for a couple of rangers near the butterflies. We are from the U.S. so for us Pascual is innocent until proven guilty, but in Mexico it's the other way around.

We spent the entire afternoon sitting and staring or wandering among the butterflies, and I told Hilary what my kids and I had learned studying them. They come from as far away as Canada. Those west of the Rockies fly to California and winter in places like Pacific Grove and Santa Cruz. Those from east of the Rockies come to Mexico, some of them flying more than 4000 miles. They return to the same trees each year, but incredibly these butterflies are the great-grandchildren, the great-great-grandchildren, or even the great-great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that left the year before. No one knows what makes it possible, but it happens.

During the summer a monarch, like most butterflies, has a short life, less than two months. But the generation that flies south in October can live four times that long. They were just starting to mate while we were there. They continue to mate into March after which the males die and the females make part of the journey back north before laying eggs and dying. It isn't until the second, third, or fourth generation that they make it back to their northernmost spots.

Each generation starts as an egg on a milkweed plant. The egg hatches into a caterpillar that grows fat and somewhat poisonous (to eat) on the milkweed leaves. The poison stays with them through the rest of their lives. The caterpillar molts several times as it grows larger. After a couple weeks, when the caterpillar is ready to pupate, it hangs upside down under a leaf attaching itself with silk. It molts one last time. Its new skin is a shiny green shell called a chrysalis. Contrary to the teachings of The Very Hungry Caterpillar most butterflies pupate in a chrysalis, not a cocoon, which is common among moths.

In the chrysalis, as I understand it, the caterpillar liquefies and in two weeks or less re-forms as a butterfly. When it breaks out of the chrysalis its wings are wadded up and useless. Soon, however, a fast hardening liquid pumps through vessels in the wings and gives them their strength and form. A few times my students and I were able to watch viceroy butterflies, whose colors mimic the monarch, complete their metamorphosis in my classroom. It was always a big hit.

The next picture is of a female butterfly. The following is a male. You can tell the difference between the male and the female because the male has two bulges or spots in its black stripes on its wings on either side next to its abdomen.

In the night we lay sleepless for several hours in our tent without our missing headlamps to read by. But I was entertained when I closed my eyes by the ghostly movements of the butterflies dancing behind my eyelids the way fireworks do when I close my eyes on the night of the Fourth of July.

The next morning we passed back through the butterfly area on our way down the mountain. It was still rather cold and cloudier than the day before. Many of the butterflies remained clinging to branches and each other in the fir trees. There were also thousands of dead butterflies on the ground, a testament to the brutal rains of the week before and again to fact that an abundance of life must include an abundance of death.

We stopped in a sunny field of flowers near the bottom where many monarchs were drinking nectar and flitting about. We hung out with them for half an hour or so to take a few more pictures and say goodbye. There we met a friendly shepherd named Jhon Acunción Moreno who got off his horse and talked to us for a while. He is the one who taught us the difference between the males and the females.

We planned to take a taxi and a bus back to Zitácuaro, but Hilary stuck her thumb out to the first pickup truck and the smiling cowboy-hatted driver gave us a lift all the way back to town. We picked up our things from Don Rivera who gave us the warmest of goodbyes and directed us to a wonderful trout restaurant called La Trucha Alegre (The Happy Trout). I can't speak for the trout but I was happy, as was the baby, Tonantsín, of proprietress Isabel.

After lunch we boarded a bus to Morelia, still astonished by our visit to the butterflies. Take a look:

Yo ♥ D.F.

2010-02-12T16:50:00.087-06:00

I knew I liked Mexico City the first time I visited in 2001 with Sue, Lynn, E, and Mamí & Papí. But, wow, what a great place. It is at once immense and accessible. The people are kind and courteous, big city folks without a big city edge. We found a thoroughly affordable hotel (can you even sleep on the sidewalk in NYC for $20 a night?) and spent hours in museums, churches, parks and pre-Columbian ruins. We had some of the best coffee I've ever had and muchos tacos ricos.

We stayed in the Hotel Rioja on Av. Cinco de Mayo, just down from the Zócalo and the cathedral which was built between 1567 and 1788. Just beyond the cathedral lie the remains of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlán, the Nahua city founded in 1325 where Mexico City now stands. The city is full of this layering of centuries of history, and pre-Columbian remains are still being excavated downtown.

The old city of Tenochtitlán was built on an island in the middle of what was once Lake Texcoco. When the Spanish conquered the region they drained the lake and built on the reclaimed land. Many of the older buildings in town are visibly leaning as they slowly sink into this soft ground.

Beneath these sinking buildings Mexico City has an outstanding Metro system, supplemented by a zero-emissions bus system -- both very useful during the heavy rain we had our first few days. The Metro has a feature I haven't seen anywhere else: sex segregation during rush hour. Early morning and late afternoon there are separate walkways for women and kids and for men. Women have the option to get on any train car at these times but most choose the women's only cars. Men have to squash into the men's cars. I have to say, it felt awfully civilized.

Mexico City is full of museums and we took a fair shot at trying to see them all, (full disclosure: we purposely skipped the interactive museum of the economy):

Catedral Metropolitana

Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlán

Museo Nacional de Arte

Museo Mural de Diego Rivera

The archaelogical site of Teotihuacán is about an hour from the city, a wonderful complex of 3 giant pyramids connected by a long avenue flanked by smaller structures. The Temple of the Sun is the most immense (now thought to be a temple to the rain god Tlaloc rather than to the sun) but the Temple of Quetzalcoatl is the most remarkable. It was covered with carvings of feathered serpents and shells and the ones that remain give a bit of a sense of how amazing it looked. There is a great recreation of part of it at the Anthropology Museum.

Monument to Los Niños Héroes

Museo de Arte Moderno

Los Voladores de Papantla

Museo Nacional de Antropología

El Borcegui Museo del Calzado -- the Shoe Museum!

Pastelería La Ideal

Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso

Museo de Arte Popular

Biblioteca de México

Teatro de la Ciudad

Cámara de Diputados

Basilica de Santa María de Guadalupe

Museo de Casa de León Trotsky (Mike's great-grandfather was a member of the Dewey Commission charged investigating Stalin's charges against him.)

Museo Frida Kahlo

Palacio Postal

Castillo de Chapultepec (National History Museum)

Museo de la Caricatura

Palacio de las Bellas Artes

The exterior of this white marble Beaux Arts confection conceals a pure art deco interior, both periods of decoration containing interpretations of pre-Columbian motifs. The limited collection it houses isn't so hot but the building is wonderful.

I think the main thing that will stick with me from this trip is how much more intimately real other places in the world are once you've been there. And I am going to try to resist making the mistake of taking the day's front page horror story about someplace in the world as a coherent social assessment of the entire nation. Yes, terrible things have been happening in Chihuahua state, but the idea of all Mexico as a more than normally dangerous place, let alone a failed state, is nuts.

From D.F. (which stands for Distrito Federal, by the way) we caught a bus to Zitácuaro, our jumping off point for the renowned and eminently peaceable monarch butterfly reserve.

Oaxaca-waca-waca

2010-02-04T17:36:00.025-06:00

Oaxaca is a city that is hard to leave -- great food, beautiful buildings and nice people. Of course that's an apt description for most of the places we have been on this trip. As we started sightseeing day number one we were promptly buttonholed by Yolanda and Carlos who had a school assignment to interview people in English. The exchange was a bit stilted but a lot of giggling kept things from getting awkward. From our interview we went to explore Santo Domingo and the enormous museum of Oaxacan history attached to it. This museum includes some of the cache of remarkable funerary offerings found at the nearby Zapotec site of Monte Albán. My favorite was the turquoise encrusted skull.

Monte Albán is at once similar and different from other ruins we have visited. The buildings have well-preserved square double friezes around them and the landscape of the site is much drier than others we have seen. When we visited it was also the setting for a shoot for Mexico's Next Top Model -- Mike got a shot of the begowned contestant and the tiger with which she was passing a ho-hum weekday morning.

We spent a number of evenings in Oaxaca sitting on the Zócalo (the central plaza in Mexican cities.) The sidewalk cafes and park benches make for great people watching especially when the evening marimba concert starts and white-clad Oaxacans dance to the traditional music.

Returning to the subject of food, Oaxaca is famous for its seven types of mole. I can't claim to have tasted them all but the ones I did were outstanding. Below is a photo of another Oaxacan specialty, chapulinas or roasted and spiced crickets! Mike tells me they're a bit oily but good.

Leaving Oaxaca we geared ourselves up for an invasion of the dauntingly immense Mexico City.