Global Wandering

Artist in La Jolla CoveLa Jolla, California has the happiest widows on earth. Not only do they play bridge in the world’s nicest bridge club (courtesy of the WPA), but the weather is delightful, and the restaurants are excellent. Everywhere I looked, the widows were smiling.
La Jolla Cove Bridge ClubThe happiest was a woman all dressed in black; her sober garb brightened by the turquoise silhouette of a cat on her sweater front. The brim of her matching sunhat bounced as she pranced along the sidewalk with her large black poodle.

May we all be that content in our old age.

Posted by jd at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Photo by Cosmosis

Before you hit the airways to visit Grandma this Christmas, or take a weekend shopping trip to Chicago, or head for the Caribbean to escape the entire over hyped holiday season, I have a present for you. No, not leftover cranberry sauce. I’m going to share with you a list of my stupidest travel mistakes.

Don’t think you need such a list? Believe me, these are not minor blunders. They are “How could anyone be that inept” mistakes. Learn from these nuggets of travel wisdom and save yourself a ton of grief. In fact, in the spirit of Og Mandino, each travel tip needs to be pondered and reflected upon for several days in order to comprehend its true import. So I will be sharing them one by one over the next week or so.

Travel Tip Number One: Know How to Get to the Airport

When I lived in Ohio and before Delta introduced SimpliFares at their Cincinnati hub in a final attempt to hold off bankruptcy, we would play all kinds of games to save hundreds of dollars on plane tickets. One tactic was to book a ticket that originated at an airport near Cincinnati where prices were lower, such as Dayton, Louisville or Lexington. Often these flights would connect through Cincinnati, so I would rent a car at the Cincy airport, drive to Dayton, fly twenty minutes back to Cincinnati and then on to my final destination.

Most airports are located near major highways and are well marked with signage. They are built where the land is flat, or at least where the hills are smaller so that the cost to flatten them isn’t prohibitive. Not Lexington, Kentucky. There, I’m convinced, city planners built the airport in the hilliest place they could find, far from major highways as if they didn’t think people would ever give up their horses and travel by plane. This is a hidden airport.

My destination was New Orleans for a client dinner. I booked a flight out of Lexington and saved $800 off a direct Cincy to New Orleans itinerary. This was my second time flying out of the “Horse Capital of the World.” On my first trip, I tried to stay on major thoroughfares and realized the airport signs had led me southeast then west then back north. For this second trip, I vowed to cut the backtracking and drive on a direct southwest course to the airport. Plus, I’d be able to enjoy the scenic bluegrass countryside. I quickly learned there is no direct route. Northwest Lexington is a land of hills and farms where settlers were content to roam aimlessly on horseback so they didn’t bother to plot streets using a grid pattern. The roads curve and wind like lazy rivers, except at least rivers go somewhere.

When I came upon the first unexpected change in direction, I should have returned to the interstate. Instead, I drove on. In circles. For an hour⎯without seeing the airport, an airplane or even a gas station to ask directions.

I checked the rental car map. It was useless. Apparently, the streets in this part of Lexington are so crooked the map company decided it would be too difficult to print them. I continued onward, trying to remain calm, but with my departure time nearing, I was quickly losing it. My positive affirmations that I could still make the flight and the airport would be around the next bend were now screams of self-loathing. How could I be this stupid? What would I tell my client? “Sorry I can’t make dinner tonight, I got lost on the way to the airport.” I drove more frantically, hands clutched to the steering wheel, tires squealing, going airborne on each hillcrest, cursing the bluegrass and the white fences⎯until I missed my flight. I was thirty minutes late. The next flight wasn’t for two hours.

I called my client and mumbled something about the plane being delayed.

Posted by jd at 3:52 PM | Permalink

I’m in charge of making cranberry sauce. A minor dish according to most
Thanksgiving aficionados, especially compared to culinary heavy hitters like turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Cranberry sauce is a mere relish. A side dish. A condiment. But it is a joy to make.

I’ve never actually cooked a turkey. The closest I got was in Mexico when we bought a live bird from a street vendor who had it tied upside down to his bicycle handlebars. We transferred the turkey to my bike and I drove it home. (Turkeys are quite placid when dangling head first from handlebars). We stored it in the back room of our house for three weeks. A kept bird. Ostensibly, to fatten it up for our Christmas feast. It lost weight instead⎯shed pounds like it was training for a marathon. On Christmas morning we took our skinny friend to the cook and bid him farewell. We were reunited later that day when we ate him for dinner.

I love the click-click of raw cranberries bouncing off each other when stirred in the pot, the popping sound they make when the heat becomes too overwhelming and they burst open, the intoxicating aroma of tart berry pulp steaming in maple syrup, cardamom, and orange juice, and the way the spoon becomes heavy in my hand as the sauce thickens and turns dark.

This year my daughter Breanna helped me make the cranberry sauce. Now she shares in the secret of why we make four times more then we need. She knows how fun it is to make, and she know when we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, we bow are heads and quietly give thanks we can have a side of turkey and stuffing with our plate of cranberry sauce.

Posted by jd at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Beach at Las Ranitas, Quintano Roo, Mexico

I don’t like late November. The weather turns cold⎯too cold to bike, but not cold enough for the snow to stay and cross-country skiing to begin. So instead of exercising I sit and get fat on leftover Halloween candy. I also dream of escaping to Mexico.

Everyone should have a faraway place that speaks to them. A place they can return to again and again to take stock of their lives and renew their souls. A place both familiar, yet unfamiliar so that each trip brings new discoveries.

Mine is Mexico. More specifically, the Yucatan Peninsula. But not Cancun. Cancun is manufactured⎯a pretend Mexico filled with resort hotels, mediocre meals and overpriced boutiques. Cancun is where Americans go to bake on the beach, drink margaritas, and if they feel adventuresome, leave their resort compounds in tour buses to visit fake eco parks like Xcaret. A few tourists will travel inland to the Mayan ruins of Chichen-Itza, but only if they can be back by dinner. To facilitate this, the Mexican government built a toll road from Cancun to the ruins and beyond that avoids traffic-slowing distractions like Mayan villages and colonial cities. The road is empty except for tour busses. The toll, so high, most Mexicans, even those well off enough to own a car, can’t afford it.

The Mexico I love is south and west of Cancun. Mayan villages like Sitilpech or Uayma with rows of casetas tucked behind whitewashed limestone walls and sheltered by citrus trees and flowering bushes. Where chickens, turkeys, and pigs wander across the road and scavenge along its edge. Where villagers busy themselves hand-washing clothes, carrying firewood, and making purchases. Where women dressed in huipiles sit crouched on wooden stools or logs, scoop dough from buckets, patting the masa into tortillas. Just like they've done for generations.

I love the beaches along the Boca Paila road south of Tulum. A dirt road with potholes deep enough to swallow cars and lined with solar powered hotels and restaurants with quaint names like Las Ranitas (the little frogs). This white stretch of coral with water the perfect shade of blue is heaven. And it’s empty. I lose my kids at crowded beaches. I once lost my son Camden at South Beach when he was four. We arrived early and he was easy to track. But more and more people came, hauling in more and more umbrellas, beach chairs and towels, and at one point I looked up from my book and the boy I had been watching in the water who I thought was my son, wasn’t. I have never been so scared⎯ except for the time I lost Camden skiing at Grand Targhee and being a novice skier myself thought he might have sunk in the snow.

Bret and I at Chacchoben I love the lesser known Mayan ruins that rise from the jungle; places with few visitors like Cacchoben or Calakmul, where howler monkeys climb among the breadnut and chicle trees, ocelatted turkeys forage at the base of stone monuments and ancient sacbes stretch for miles into the wilderness.
Bret, Breanna and I at Calakmul looking toward Guatemala

Some might accuse me of being callous, of making light of the Mayan’s poverty and not wanting them to change. Not true. I believe people can progress without giving up their heritage and culture. Greater wealth and education shouldn’t mean homogenization. Flooding the globe with $100 hand cranked laptops doesn’t mean every village needs or will soon have a McDonalds. I have found the Mayan people, despite their hardships, to be happy. I believe it is because they stay connected to nature, to the simple patterns of life. They make tortillas by hand from their own corn harvest because not only do fresh made tortillas taste better; they bring satisfaction.

We spent last Christmas and New Years in Mexico. It was a lovely way to end 2004. Toward the end of our trip, I awoke just after midnight from a horrible dream. I dreamt my family and I had joined a cult, and I disagreed with its leaders on some doctrinal points. I convinced several families to take my side of the dispute. The cult’s leaders reacted by ordering our extermination. We were in a death fight. Only eight of us were left. I crouched in the back of a pickup truck with Camden as we rode to the final battle. I told him goodbye and apologized for leading him astray. I was wrong to join the cult, and I was wrong to fight over something so unimportant. Yet, we didn’t flee. We stayed hidden in the truck bed, knowing we would soon die, but wanting to preserve our lives, if only for a few minutes longer. The fear of death was palpable; as was the regret. The truck stopped and I arose. A gray-haired man dressed in a suit and tie ran at me with a bowie knife. Then I awoke.

What did it mean? Why such a nightmare after two weeks of relaxation? The dream’s details began to fade, but an impression remained. I felt like I could reach out and touch time. Let it sift through my fingers like the Caribbean sand. I could feel it moving faster. Days and years that once seemed to crawl along unhurried were accelerating as if the destination was certain, and there was no time to waste. It scared me. I committed to use my time more wisely.

Everyone should have a faraway place that speaks to them. A place they can return to again and again to take stock of their lives and renew their souls. A place both familiar, yet unfamiliar so that each trip brings new discoveries. Where is yours?

Posted by jd at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The season’s first snow fell in the Upper Valley yesterday. Puffy flakes blanketed the twigs and grass, turning dry prairies into fields of cotton. My kids bundled up and tossed their first snowballs. The wet packing snows of November will soon give way to the fairy dust that makes skiing so great and snowmen scarce.

Having grown up back East, I love Westerners attitude toward snow. They delight in it. Welcome it. Snow is not something to fear and curse like it is in Ohio. No armada of salt trucks is sent to attack the covered streets, turning the white hush into slop. Here, the snowplow drivers relax by the fire until at least four inches have fallen. Then they plow, piling up drifts on the roadside while leaving enough snow on the street to keep drivers happy. Idahoans have grown up skiing and snow mobiling so they welcome the car’s glide around a snowy corner. When they sense a tire slipping, they don’t, like Ohioans, pump the breaks and crank the steering wheel with bug-eyed looks of desperation as if their vehicle had suddenly been possessed.

The weathermen in Idaho don’t speak in grave tones when forecasting a snowstorm. Nor do they exhale with relief, “whew, it missed us this time,” when the forecast is wrong. Instead, with snow on the horizon, their eyes glisten with excitement and they suppress a belly laugh, knowing they’ll call in sick tomorrow so they can hit the slopes.

Idahoans pray for snow. Four years of drought have emptied the reservoirs and strained farmers’ nerves. I asked an old sheep rancher whether this winter would bring the deep snows. He shook his head, unknowing, and recounted what a Native American tribe used to say. “Lots of snow this year. White man cut and stack lots of wood.”

Posted by jd at 9:34 PM | Permalink

Sun Valley Idaho and Beyond

Here’s a shot I took today from the airplane looking toward my house. I live three mountain ranges over. In the foreground is the Sawtooth Range, followed by the Lost River Range and finally the Lemhi Range. Ski slopes should open early this year.

Posted by jd at 3:52 PM | Permalink

Live Oak - Grand Coteau, Louisiana

I spent the day in New Orleans. I visit two or three times a year, and I was interested to see if the city was fairing as poorly as the press made it sound. I’ve read comments that New Orleans will never be the same, that it has lost its soul, and whatever remains will be a mere amusement park; a French Quarter Disneyland. I was especially intrigued after reading Michael Lewis’ essay in The New York Times magazine a few weeks ago. He wrote New Orleanians’ penchant for storytelling had led to the “wild rumors and outlandish fictions” of violence and anarchy, which in turn were too quickly believed by the city’s residents, the media and the government. Now he saw a ray of hope arising from the debris. A city, whose citizens’ inherent distrust had proved unfounded, was “alive with possibilities.”

Seventy days after Katrina hit, the city’s west side is flourishing. The live oaks still stand majestic along Carrolton and St. Charles, and beneath them workers patch roofs, sweep porches and clear trash. Businesses are reopening.
Garden District Signs The grassy medians at each street corner are decorated with signs announcing store openings, repair services and church meetings. This activity is evident along the mansion-lined streets as well as in humbler sections on the edge of the Garden District.

I drove through the French Quarter and found it relatively unscathed. Throw-beads still cling to the wires that stretch across Bourbon Street. Music blares from bars and souvenir shops. The streets and alleyways still reek of beer. The only differences I could see were fewer empty parking spaces and more uncollected garbage. The city’s waste management department must be having as difficult a time finding employees as other businesses. Most of the radio commercials were from companies pleading for workers. The ad for a national pizza chain was especially telling. I paraphrase, but this is the gist of their message. “Now that your house’s roof has been torn off, your living room flooded, and your job eliminated, here’s some good news: We’re hiring at Bankety-blank Pizza. Come on in and apply.”

New Orleans East is not flourishing.
New Orleans East Signs The placards in the grass are more ominous; ads for house gutting services and businesses wanting to buy doors, windows and fireplace mantels.
No stores have reopened. For there are few people here.
The streets are empty. The houses condemned. No orderly debris piles along the curbs.
This is where the New Orleanians lived who have been relocated across the country.
They left behind their homes, cars and furniture in a swirl of floodwaters. Stray boats sit in the most unexpected places, evidence of how high the water reached.

If New Orleans is “alive with possibilities” then this is where the citizens and leaders will need to be most creative.
New Orleans East was the heart of its poverty, ground zero of its 80% school dropout rate, gang violence and drug abuse.

Now the poor have disbanded, comforted and cared for in far away towns, but eventually they will straggle back⎯one family at a time. New Orleans is their home. And home always beckons.

I cannot begin to fathom how to help the residents of New Orleans East solve their problems, which run far deeper then a loss of material possessions.

New Orleans is rebuilding. The city will recover. But to recover its soul, it will need to embrace its poor and help them become productive citizens.

Posted by jd at 8:52 AM | Permalink

Johnny Bench Ate Here

Yesterday I had lunch with Johnny Bench. We met in line at Cantina Grill, a Mexican restaurant in Denver International Airport that used to have excellent food until they changed owners, switched recipes and replaced the corn tortillas with hard shell tacos. The best indicator that a Mexican restaurant will disappoint is the absence of corn tortillas on the menu. In restaurants where they are missing, there is usually an abundance of orange cheese smothering mediocre entrées. Real Mexicans don’t eat orange cheese, and they don’t eat taco shells shaped like boats.

Johnny is standing next to me. I look up, startled. He looks back. Johnny is my childhood baseball hero. I read his biography when I was eight. Memorized it. I wanted to wear number 5 on my little league uniform ⎯it was usually taken by the coach’s son, along with numbers 14, 8, 24, 13, all digits worn by key members of the Big Red Machine. I watched Johnny play many times at Riverfront Stadium. Watched from afar. No one I knew growing up sat near the ball field in the Blue Seats, an enclave for businessmen and season ticket holders. We always sat in the Red Seats, high up in one of the top six rows near the centerfield scoreboard where the tickets were cheapest. From that distance, Johnny looked like a red and white speck behind home plate. But now he stands three feet away.

He speaks. “I’ll take a Diet Coke.” The voice is unmistakable. A clear baritone that brings memories of summer nights, a radio to my ear, listening to Joe Nuxhall interview Johnny on the Star of the Game show. I still remember Nuxhall’s ecstatic play-by-play when Johnny hit a home run off a pitcher that was trying to intentionally walk him to load the bases.

I can’t think of what to say. Should I ask for his autograph? Tell him how much I enjoyed following his career. Ask him why he’s flying commercial instead of taking a private jet? Is business that bad? Before I can decide, he heads for my table, leaving me to pay for my salad at the counter. I say my table, because it’s near the door where I was going to sit. But Johnny lives dangerously. He doesn’t keep his briefcase tight in hand like me, ready to fend off any hooligans who try to yank it away. No, he walks ten yards to my table, hangs his sport coat over my chair and leaves his bag on the floor. Then he turns his back on his possessions and returns to the cashier as if no one would dare steal Johnny’s things. Nobody steals on this hall of fame catcher.

I sit at the bar. Alone. And add this experience to the many when I’ve been speechless while standing near celebrities. I speak to groups for a living, but I’m struck dumb in the presence of the famous. I’ve ridden an elevator in silence with Lou Holz, and on another occassion with Ted Turner. Earlier this year, I sat behind Evander Hollyfield on a flight to San Diego. He had a delightful conversation with his seatmate. I quietly watched his bald head bob and weave for two hours.

It comes down to this. I think celebrities don’t want to be bothered. I figure they’ve been hassled for autographs all of their lives, and I should leave them in peace.

My son Bret would have spoken. His hero is Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. We flew across the globe last summer to visit the Australia Zoo to get Irwin’s autograph. He wasn’t there, of course, but if he had been, Bret would have spoken to him.

Boys are meant to have heroes. And when they see them, they speak out. It’s only as men that we suppress are hero worshipping. Yet, if we see our boyhood heroes on an elevator, in an airplane, or in line at a Mexican restaurant, we stand still, awestruck, and revere them in silence.

Posted by jd at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)