Belize Epilogue: Visitor Journal

Under the TV was a little book with no title on its spine.  I pulled it out ... the cover said Visitor Journal.  I leafed through it.  There were notes from people who had stayed in the Reinhardt suite of Coral Villlage all the way back to 2006.

I looked for some juicy stuff, but the best I got was "The bikes here are a great amenity!  You can go into town and shop."  Ugggh.  So I wrote the following entry:

--------

Feeling a lot better today.  Chuck's dead body is finally at the bottom of The Blue Hole, 400 feet down, where no one will ever find him.  Amy and I dragged what we lovingly referred to as "Bag O' Chuck" on the Sefarious tour with us.  "Diving Equipment" we explained to our boatmates.  When we got to the site, Amy did a little flirting with the tour guide as I tossed his body over the side.  Weighed with some wet cement, he sank like a rock.  He'll never cheat me again, the bastard.  

We went to El Rumbon to eat.  We were asked what we wanted.  I asked him in return, "You know that really nice looking bird with the arched wings that hangs motionless above the sea, as if time itself had stopped?"

"Yes," said the waiter. 

"I want that grilled," I said.

If there's one thing I've learned here in Belize, it's that rum (Belizean Holy Water) mixes with everything.  Fruit juice, soda, and coffee are obvious choices, but milk and sea water are just as effective.

For fun things to do, you can't go wrong with Golf Cart Chicken.  You just veer into the left lane, close your eyes and step on the gas.  Nobody gets hurt, not at 12 mph, but a lot of luggage flies all over creation.  This is colorful and SO worth it.  I learned not to do it with the San Pedro authorities though - they have no luggage, and they can put you in jail.

And as Amy and I feel the soft sea breezes float over our body, we sigh a contented sigh.  If only the authorities weren't dragging us off to deport us, we'd be back in a heartbeat.  

Belize Day 4: Amy And Craig Get Ruined

Alternate cutesy titles for this post:

• What's Mayan is Mayan
• You Better Belize It!
• Jamaican Me Crazy (OK, not relevant, but Amy kept saying it all day)

So one big draw for Amy and I to visit Belize was the Mayan Ruins: some of the oldest human structures in existence.  There are several sites in Belize, but Lamanai in the center of the country is the best.  We got up to catch the 7:00 AM boat from the island of San Pedro.  

Aaron and Javier were our tour guides, and they immediately started cracking jokes.  The boat ride was to be "50 Belize Minutes", with a Belize Minute being a somewhat loose interpretation of time (usually longer than a standard minute, big surprise).  About 15 minutes into the trip, it started to rain.  They brought out a blue tarp threw it over every one and said, "Hold on,"  This was to become a recurring theme!

In 50 Belize minutes, the rain had let up and we had crossed the Caribbean Sea to the mainland.  There we navigated up the Belize River for a bit, eating a breakfast of chicken-filled johnnycakes, fresh pineapple and melon.  It was looking more like rainforest, my first trip to such a habitat.  Aaron pointed across the river into the trees and said, "Look!  Four-legged chicken!"  It was a huge iguana lounging in the tree.

We got onto a bus labelled Faith complete with Latin American praying Jesus decals and "Natural air conditioning," meaning roll-downable windows.  (It started raining again, so we didn't take advantage of that. )  The two lane road in Belize had no shoulder, fast-moving traffic, and lots of bumps.  Faith indeed!

Aaron was quick with the jokes, so you had to listen closely.  He pointed to a junkyard full of cars and said, "That's the women's driving school."  The road had huge speed bumps every mile or so.  "We call those Sleeping Policeman," he said.

We made it to the river around 10:30, where it was sprinkling a little.  Amy and I got in the boat along with about 20 other passengers. We were up front.  Big mistake.  As we tore off down the river, the rain got worse and belted into us.  Aaron threw the tarp over us, and then ... we couldn't believe this! ... he opened the front hold where all the life jackets were at and crawled inside.  I was in the front, hanging onto this tarp for dear life (across from me was an older woman doing the same thing - I felt for her).  Aaron was nice and dry as my knuckles turned blue over the one hour trip down the Belize River.  But later I figured ... he probably couldn't shove one of us passengers under there.  So at least one of us was dry!

We were like drowned rats crawling off the boat at Lamanai.  I checked my cell phone to see if it was still working.  Not only was it dry ... it picked up a signal!  Here in the middle of the Belize rainforest.  I had a voice mail, but I couldn't actually get to my voice mail box, so I did a *69.  Some guy at Cornell picked and said, "Hello?"  I asked him he wanted.  "Oh, we were just testing the Emergency Mass Notification system."  I told him it was a good thing there wasn't an emergency - I was in the middle of the Belizean rain forest   He wasn't amused.  Cornell people are hard to shock.

But it was beautiful here in the ran forest - lush and verdant, and just-washed of course.  We sat down to lunch of chicken, rice and beans with homemade habanero sauce, fried plantains, and Belkins, the local Belize beer.  That we headed off for the ruins.

We took about four steps into the rain forest and were immediately treated to this growling, whining animal noise.  It got louder and louder, until it drowned out the voice of our park guide.  "Howler monkeys," he said.  They were arguing over turf, and the loudest one would walk off with the prize.  Sounds like the project I left behind at Cornell!

The park guide's favorite phrase was, "According to the Department of Archaeology ..."  He started every important fact with it, as if the Belize Department of Archaeology was the sole arbiter of truth.  We know this much for sure.  The Mayan temples are (1) solid (2) old (3) very nicely designed.

It was here that we learned the workers on these temples were short people, while the priests and the godhead figures were quite tall.  Amy formulated a grand unified theory at this point.  Since both the Mayan priests and vampires are tall ... the priests must have been vampires.  Made sense.  This is a bit of logic that no one can refute ... even the Belize Department of Archaeology.

The largest of the temples was about 150 feet tall, and the steps were quite step.  After the standard CYA disclaimer  "Climbing this structure is not recommended by the Parks Department of Belize.  You do so at your own risk," about 90% of our group went off to climb it.  Amy and I stayed behind.  We've climbed the high peaks in the Adirondacks ... this structure was best viewed from the bottom.

I found the whole Mayan architecture to be very postmodern .... about 1500 years before postmodernism.  The structures blended into nature very nicely, and quoted off each other.  Functional - you could easily sacrifice people from it - yet organic.

By the time we got back on the boat, it was sprinkling again, but we couldn't care less.  There was sense we'd never be dry again, so why even try.  Aaron poured us plastic cups of rum punch and we passed them down - the party had begun.  A boat from Eco-Tours, a rival company, jetted past us and we took a side tributary to race them.  But we couldn't get enough speed, and as we hit the main river came into view, we could see their wake.  Aaron said, "Hang on!"  Then WHAM!!  Our boat hit the wake sideways and our rum punches spilled all over each other.  It was raining rum punch.  "Belizean holy water," Aaron called it.

We got back on the bus and Belkin beers were passed all around.  Aaron then dug out what (for me) was the kick over the moon - coconut tarts.  He passed them out and then went down the aisle with an open bottle of Beliziean black rum, splashing a little on each of ours.  OHMIGOD.  Heavenly.

Aaron was taking questions, so Amy brought up the whole 2012 Mayan end-of-the-world thing.  He replied that though it'll mean a big end-of-the-year tourism burst for Belize, he believes it's more of an "end-of-the-cycle".  The world won't end, just be reborn. "Damn," said one of our compatriots, "Wish I hadn't maxed out all my credit cards!"

And as we got back on the Belize river boat and floated off to the Carribean, we were schnockered and happy and ready for the new cycle to begin.

That night, we went to the Jamba Jerk Hut and had what Amy believed was the best meal in Belize.  Jerk pork, chicken, conch, dish ... and a first for me ... lobster!  This wasn't your ordinary red Maine big bluging lobster.  This was a comparatively small, colorful and totally fresh lobster covered in Jerk sauce (which is in itself warm and spicy and homey).  A perfect introduction to this fruit-of-the-sea.

-----

It was a kind of high for the trip that we spent the next two days landing from.  We swam and walked and biked and ate more Jamaican food.  The details are not as interesting, but it was a rest we really needed.  It had been a big year for Amy and I, starting last September in Paris and ending here on the beach of San Pedro.  Who knows what's next?

Belize Day 3: La Isla Bonita

San Pedro has adopted the fitting moniker, "La Isla Bonita" from the Madonna song.  But she says the island is purely a work of fiction, and that the song is "a tribute to the Latin American people, and to myself."  Mostly the latter, I presume.  Why else would she dance in a Flamenco dress in the video - a custom from Spain, a whole continent away from Latin America?  I guess the color of your dress trumps cultural accuracy.

Anyway, we reserved day 3 for some serious tropical downtime.  No schedule.  Just Amy and me and a hammock and some beach reading.  Me, I'm tackling The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - clearly a computer nerd's beach read.  But it captures the psychology of computer scientists with deadly accuracy, even though it was written in 1982 before the Internet, GUI's, mice and cell phones were commonplace things.  Amy is reading a selection from Oprah's Book Club, Anna Shreve's The Pilot's Wife.  She says it's kind of hokey  but it's a page turner suitable for taking one's mind away from the beautiful scenery for two seconds.

It's like we never left Ithaca!

We don't want to be total slugs, so we got on our bikes and scoped out the north part of the island. We rode up the beach, which was a pretty easy drive except for some harrowing spots of soft sand.  San Pedro is technically two islands with a $2BZ bridge in the middle.  ($2BZ is $1US - Belizean currency is tied to American's at a fixed exchanged rate).  Not knowing this, and because the bridge is so small, we almost blew right past the toll both, and we heard "Hey!  Toll bridge!"  So we went back and paid our toll, and headed for North San Pedro Island.

It was an interesting mix of old settlements and new construction there.  It was clearly for the Americans and Europeans who wanted resort living, who didn't want to go into town much.  It didn't quite fit the Belizean asthetic, as far as I understood it.  I saw an Asian man with dreads.  I saw two huge monitor lizards crawling through a construction site (like the one on the right).  It was like that.

Amy had scoped out restaurants for our trip, and the most exciting one was El Fugon (The Fireside Hearth) which we saved for day 3.  And WOW!  It was excellent on so many levels, but totally unexpected.  You walk into this compound, unshielded from the sun, with about 5 picnic tables.  They give you a menu with 5 entree choices - grilled chicken, grilled fish, grilled lobster, grilled shrimp and shrimp in orange sauce.  That was it.  We started with Coca Cola and Fanta ... the server ran out the door, evidently to the store down the street, and came back with two cold bottles of soda.  (We though they may have run out, but he did it with the couples that dined after us too!)  For $35BZ (about $17 US), you got an appetizer, entree and dessert.

OMG!!!  For the appetizer, we had Fish Balls -  get your mind out of the gutter - which were minced fresh fish with garlic and deep fried ... and conch fritters which were about the same with fresh conch.  They were heavenly - crisp, light and they had the lime sauce you wanted to drink from the dish.   For the entree, I had the Grilled Fish and Amy the Shrimp in orange sauce.   That they were fresh was a given.  But the fire grilling it them shot the taste over the top.  It made you close your eyes and savor every smoky bite.

For dessert - key lime pie.  But not just any key lime pie ... this was frozen.  But instead of being crystally and granular, it was cold and smooth as a milkshake.  It was kind of a miracle - solid and liquid at the same time.  It tasted good, but it FELT good too.  Key lime pie is one of my favorite desserts, and this was the best I had ever had.

If we had been a food coma before, this was Food Life Support.  We knew we would now refer to our lives in two eras - before El Fugon, and after El Fugon.

Belize Day 2: Swims With Fishes

Which would you choose?

The next morning, I was totally refreshed.   Amy and I got up and had breakfast we procured from Marina's grocery down the street.  There was fresh orange juice (Belize's main export being citrus) toast and New Zealand butter (it's cheap - the economics are beyond me though), Special K and "Hospitality" Raisin Bran.  Yes, the "Hospitality" is the brand name and it's in quotes.  I tasted it.  It's the kind of hospitality that says, "I don't want to kill you, necessarily, but I don't want you staying at my house either."

At Coral Bay Villas you get free use of their bikes.  And bikes are standard equipment here in San Pedro. They all have one speed with a rusty chain (why bother keeping them oiled in this humidity?).  The alternative is a golf cart, which is slow and expensive and a real hassle to park - of course I would never go that route.  As much as I love bicycles, I didn't think I would like this homely red one with broken pedals.  But it got us around.

We mistakenly pedalled into town, and immediately got accosted by golf carts.  The Belizeans knew how to drive them, but not the Americans.  Amy was weaving in and out, trying to get used to the bike, and we ended up doing a U-Turn and headed back out of town.

Has someone ever molested a crocodile? Seriously?  

Once we got past the tourist zone, everything was right with the world.  The road was a bumpy sand, gravel mixture with pot holes full of water. But we dodged them handily and took our time.  Really, you don't need pavement out here in San Pedro.  Everything's fine white sand mixed with water, and it's just naturally hard.  As you get out of town further, the houses are more plush but further spread out.  The resorts are the ones you have to take a water taxi to get to (if you tried a golf cart, the first bump would send your luggage all over the road).  But it was green and lovely.

Then we went snorkelling - a first for me!  It was a mixed bag.  I put the tube in my mouth, ducked underwater and got a mouthful of sea water, and couldn't breathe. This tends to make snorkelling a bit uncomfortable.  I tried it three times, with the same results each time.  Our guide said just to ditch the tube, go underwater for a bit and come back up again when I need some air.  This is when all my adolescent training of swimming for long periods underwater really came in handy.  Good thing I quit smoking.

Underwater is a different kind of gorgeous.  It's colorful, yes, but mainland Belize is colorful.  (Unfortunately I have no pictures - my cell phone isn't exactly waterproof.)   Underwater, it's more about the motion. Schools of fish moving this way, and turning on a dime.  They are afraid of nothing.  They'll swim right for you, or bob around you.  There are traffic patterns, but they look like they'd take a lifetime to master, and the fish seem infinitely flexible about it.  They've seen it all.  There were groupers, some of whom we'd eat later.  (I like to think we picked, say, the organized crime elements of groupers, thus leaving the rest to lead a quieter, more free life).  There were lots of fish and coral, all of which I've forgotten the name of.

Then we headed for Shark-Ray alley, and Amy lent me her equipment there.  Much better!  We quickly jumped over the side to find ... big surprise ... sharks and rays!  The sharks were not Jaws, or anything close.  They were small, ugly sharks, sort of like bulldogs.  They didn't come up to you, but they didn't go too far out of their way.  They were not interested in eating anybody.  I saw one ray, who glided over the bottom like a sea bird gliding over the surface of the water, kicking up a little sand along the way.

Stunning!  The water was clear and crisp just like the air above it.  The plants undulated in a group like people doing Tai Chi. I can see why people get hooked on this.  They come to Belize, stay in the cheap hotels north of the city, and spend all their money going straight to the diving sites.  It is what hiking in the Adrirondacks is to me and Amy.  But after a few mouthfuls or salt water, and the nausea that comes with, I decided that I'm really not cut out for that life.  Aquaman I will never be.

We dried out in our hammocks.  Amy said, "The hammock is the best invention since velcro."  And then ... snap!  It came to me!  Velcro hammocks!  You stick yourself in one, and you can swing as high as you want, even loop-the-loop, and never fall out!  My plan now is to market this idea, make a ton of money, come back to Belize with Amy and live the quiet life.  I'm sure I'm the first one who ever had this plan.

Walking along the beach, a couple of nice gentleman offered us spliffs.  They don't really hide it here.  Amy doesn't like the smell of pot, so I declined gracefully.

We made it to El Patio for dinner, where I had my first ever Rum Punch.  It's free with your meal there, and it tasted like something I needed a non-free version of.  I had coconut fish, Thai  inspired fare, and Amy had blackened grouper.  It was pretty good - certainly better than any seafood than we could get in Ithaca.  But it was kind of let down from Lily's the night before.

But here, where everything is so gorgeously blue I've already become spoiled.  And I don't want to be.

Belize Day 1: Grilled Conch

"Don't go on vacation during a major project."  That was my rule and since I only took vacations once in a blue moon anyway, I lived up to it.

Of course that's moronic. A major project, with all the stress and fighting and hacking people's ideas to little bitsy pieces and questioning their ability to do simple things like add two numbers ... this is the perfect time for a vacation.  And being on the Workday Human Resources project for Cornell, and with three months to go until rollout, it's the perfect time to pace yourself until the final sprint.  (I can't believe I'm using sports analogies.  This is proof positive I need a vacation.)

Fall is the really the pinnacle of beauty and richness in southern New York, with peak color on the trees, apple festivals, pumpkins filling the roadside stands, donuts and cider.  One last hurrah before winter drops down like a tablecloth.  

Screw that!  Amy and I are going to Belize. It's subversive!  After a hot summer we're going to cap it off ... with more heat!  And it's the last of the wet season.  Next month, it'll be overrun with tourists escaping the blizzards and dysfunctional holiday dinners with family.

 In case you don't know, and I certainly didn't, Belize is a small South American country near Guatemala. It's the former colony called British Honduras, and it's on the Carribean Sea and shares some characteristics of your typical Carribean tourist destinations like Cancun.  But it's FAR less built-up.  You can see it when your jet lands in Belize City, on a single landing-strip airport.

We got up at 3:30 to take the early plane from Syracuse (already you're thinking, who gets up at 3:30 for vacation?)   We stepped off the plane in jeans and shirts and jackets, and got blasted by mid 80's heat and humidity.  Obviously we were overdressed.  We took a puddle-jumper over to San Pedro island, got to our villa and took care of the situation right away.  Shorts and t-shirts.  Standard Belizean vacation uniform!

So the picture above is not from the travel brochure.  It's the real deal, looking off our patio door.  Palm trees.  Coconuts.  The infinite ocean.  The soft sea breeze.  The professor pedaling his bicycle to charge the radio battery.  OK, I made the last one up.

And the sounds!  First you think it's your electronic going off, beeping and blooping.  But the beeps and bloops end with rasping or a flip in the tone and you realize ... that's a bird, idiot!  I have no idea what their names are.  Supposedly there are toucans all over, the Belizean national bird.  But I haven't seen any yet.  Nor have I seen Fruit Loops.

We swam in the ocean - beautiful and clear and waveless (thanks to the barrier reefs out there, which we'll see tomorrow).  The sand is soft and supple. My toes were happy squishing around in them, and if you can get your toes happy, the rest is sure to follow.

There are virtually no cars on San Pedro, just bicycles, a few motorbikes.  People just walk from place to place.  What a concept!  We walked up the beach to Lily's for dinner.  Amy and I split a plate of grilled conch and tequilla-roasted grouper.  The grouper was the freshest fish I have ever tasted - it melts on your fork, much less in your mouth!

Conch is really good stuff, and you can't get it very many places in the states,  My only knowledge of it was from Lord of The Flies, where the conch shells the kids blow are some symbol for something-or-other (god knows what - my English teachers are cringing.)  We had ours grilled, although it's most popular in soup.  It's a little like squid, but the outside is more chewy and the inside is more tender.  It's not as fishy as most seafood, it almost takes like a vegetable.  I'm sure Grover wouldn't appreciate it.

It's time to let go, let go, let go...

Wilmington, Days 4 and 5: Lobster Feet

OK, the first problem on day 4 was getting out of bed.  I put my feet on the floor, put some weight on them, and just about passed out from the pain.  They were swelled up and beet red, and I could see blisters starting to form.

The fact is I've had blistering 2nd degree sunburns before on my thighs  (which I wrote about in this blog) my arms, and my neck before.  But they never really put me out of commission. This was something new.  I had never had a sunburn which made tissues swell up, but apparently it's common when your feet get sunburned.  Strangely I was fine walking around but standing still, my ankles felt tightened in a vise.

So let's get moving!  My posse and I walked to the Bellamy Mansion, an antebellum home near downtown Wilmington.  It wasn't long and wide like the plantation homes you normally picture - rather, it was tall. There were four floors above the ground and one below.  The attic was tremendously hot on a day like this, but it gave room for the heat to rise and keep the rest of the building cool.  Each room had a fireplace (kinda silly-looking on a 100 degree day, but ...).  A gravity-fed hot shower was fed by a tank on the 3rd floor.  The big columns rose to the sky.  



Architecturally, I really liked the staircase in the back of the house.   It's an outside staircase, technically - the picture to the right feels like you're in a room, but in fact there's no fourth wall.  It's kind of a spiral staircase, but it doesn't spiral all the way around.  Beautiful curves, no?

It was a cool tour, and we topped it off with lunch at the Reel Cafe.  Then Pam and Brad and Liza headed back to Durham, leaving us a car to do some exploring on our own. My feet were pulsing in and out like a cartoon foot after having an anvil dropped on it.  Amy had a nice warm sunburn on her back. So  Amy and I responded by napping.  


We got up, swam in the hotel pool, and went to Cape Fear Seafood Company to eat.  (We passed Cape Fear Physical Therapy on the way - their version of therapy is holding a pistol on you, so you forget the pain you're feeling.). We started with a "Cape Fear Signature Dish" - crab dip.  As we were spreading it on toast points,  a live crab crawled out and bit Amy on the nose.  (All right - I promise, that's my LAST Cape Fear joke.)  Amy had Grouper Picatta, a nice twist on the traditional chicken or veal picatta.  I had fresh blackened catfish with Beurre Blanc - the fish itself was fantastic, but the spice was kicked it over the moon!  Best blackened ANYTHING I ever et.  The waiter mentioned that the "owner's mother whipped up some berry cobbler if you're interested."  Hell yeah!  Must be nice owning a restaurant where your mother just brings by extra stuff every once in while.  Amy had key lime pie - also spectacular.  


I mean really ... if you vacation on the coast, you really gotta eat seafood, right?  We did our part!


We finished the day at Orton Pool Bar, reportedly the oldest pool hall in America.  Amy had a gin and tonic, which they make with homemade tonic.  (Evidently there was no bathtub for homemade gin, but no matter.)  I had a flight of Kentucky bourbons: Knob Creek, Bakers, Bookers, Bakers, and Basil-Hayden.  I'm a big fan of bourbon so this was the perfect end to a Southern day.  And of course, bourbon is an extremely potent sunburn cure.  Or at least it makes you forget your sunburn.

The next day we woke up and once again, I had trouble getting out of bed.  My feet were starting to develop big blisters, and it was harder to get my swollen feet in my sandals.

We hobbled over to Penders Cafe.  Classic Southern diner - Coca Cola signs everywhere (although, ironically, they only serve Pepsi), a counter with swivelly seats. Amy got the sausage biscuit, and I had their pretty solid $3.99 breakfast special - eggs,bacon, toast and grits.  I've taken a liking to grits, although I'm still a little baffled why it's popular down south and not in the traditional "corn belt" states like Nebraska and Iowa.  Nebraskans may husk corn, but they don't eat it.  Anyway, as Charleston's Post and Courier proclaimed in 1952, "An inexpensive, simple, and thoroughly digestible food, [grits] should be made popular throughout the world. Given enough of it, the inhabitants of planet Earth would have nothing to fight about. A man full of [grits] is a man of peace." 

Amy and I left Wilmington that morning... at peace, throughly charmed, and ready to go back again.  When the weather was cooler, of course!

We spent the rest of the day with Pam and Brad, Liza and Becky and the dog Peter in their beautiful house in Durham.  (Peter is the dog-formerly-known-as-Amy's-dog, and he's pretty cool on the dog scale)    I kept my feet up with ice, as Brad kept my mint julep glass full.  This is important!  That evening we had BBQ ribs, which ranks among the best I've had!  People have different versions of BBQ, and these were smokey, salty dry-rub versions that I tend to prefer over drippy, sugary ones from Kansas City.  They reminded me of Charlie Varga's in Memphis, or the Dinosaur in Syracuse... but the quality of the meat was better.  We also had fantastic Cornell Chicken ... amazingly, I didn't actually know about Cornell Chicken until a month ago (6 months after I started working at Cornell).  Put a side of okra next to it and finish it off with pound cake for dessert.  Mmmmmm!  

Maybe it takes my feet days or weeks to heal, and I won't be able to work off all this Southern food I ate.  Maybe I'll end up a portly Southern Gentleman, with a mint julep in my hand, a white suit, and sitting on the porch with my hound dog.  Good enough!  Vacations are fitting rooms to try on new lives for a few days, walk around them, see if they fit.  I wouldn't mind this one at all.

Wilmington Day 3: Burn Baby Burn!

Back when I was a kid, there was no sunscreen at all, and you slathered yourself up with cocoa butter, olive oil, ... or to save time you just lit yourself on fire.  But nowadays when us too-fair-skinned people are faced with a 95 degree day with lots of humidity (for instance in North Carolina in July) we grease outselves up with the most SPF's we can get.


On Thursday, Amy, Pam, Brad, Liza and I hopped in the car and headed down to Forth Fisher, Atlantic Ocean beach extraordinaire.  Armed with a cooler of water, diet root beer and deli items, crackers and nuts, beach chairs, and ... SPF 100 sunscreen.  Yes, SPF 100!  I spread it thickly over my arms, shoulders, legs, all the places I normally get burned.  I put a little on my feet too.  Then we went shuffling through the sand and into the waves.

This was my first full immersion in salt water, and it was pretty awesome!  I love the ways the waves tickle and bubble over the sand.  It's like it's massaging the coast line.  And then to be in the water and pelted by waves.  Glorious!  Sometimes they looked ferocious, like the were going to knock you down from above, only to fade out inches from your body.  And sometimes they looked tame and walloped you from behind.  You get used to being pulled back and forth in its wake.

Marine life ranged from sandpipers skittering over the coast ... to pelicans riding inches above the water, moving up and down as it encountered waves, as if there were invisible wheels beneath them ... to a class of kids and their boogie boards watching for tamable waves to ride in.

I went in the water four times.  The fourth, I was jostled about by the waves like the poor female prospects in Night at the Roxbury... so much so that I got dizzy.  So I climbed out to the beach chairs, popped in my earphones and listened to some Bossa Nova.  And that's where I got burned.  It was very subtle - with the wind whipping around me, and my body cooled down by the ocean, I didn't feel tremendously warm.  But my feet were getting a little pink.  Oh ...no problem, I thought.

By the time we left the beach in late afternoon, my feet were turning a few shades redder.  Amy bought some aloe vera gel for her toasted back, and I popped some on my feet.  Weird.  I was a little crispy elsewhere, but nothing major.  Just my feet.   Hmmmm.

For dinner we went to Riverboat Landing in Wilmington.  It was half-price night on wine, and we got a bottle of Chianti that became my trip favorite.  We started with fried dill pickles (classic Southern) and caprese salad (well, Southern Italian, maybe).  Amy went for the duck, because that's what she does and I love her for it. Brad did shrimp and grits, Pam went for the steak, Liza had spinach ravioli, and I did chicken jambalya - a nice burn on it.  Afterwards we hit Market Street for ice cream cones. And then Amy and I lounged around on a park bench, watching the river flow by.

Ahhh yes.  It was quintessentially Southern, laid back, take-your-time day.  Brad got me a t-shirt, "We Don't Care How Y'all Do It Up North."  I'm going to wear it to Cornell - it's just offensive enough to raise eyebrows, but not enough to get me fired.

And as I went to sleep, I thought ... hmmm, my feet sure look red. 

Wilmington Day 2: Accidental Head Butt, Fireworks Junk!

July 4th used to be my least favorite holiday.   It was hot, sticky, long, slightly fake and manufactured, full of people, and had no redeeming qualities ... until I met Amy, whose opinion is exactly the opposite.  I suppose it was this idea's novelty that made it so fascinating.  And yeah, I'm changing my opinion.  

The fireworks were to start at 9:00 close to where we staying, and we didn't dare move the car for fear we'd lose our parking space. So we decided to stay in historic downtown Wilmington.  Except all the history - museums, old houses - were closed.   That picture of me (in my new Australian hat, mate!) is in front of the Bellamy Mansion.  That's the closest we got to it.  

But we found two ways to explore downtown nonetheless.  The first was by trolley.  Our tour guide was a tall old African-American southern gentleman who prefaced each sentence with, "If you please would guide your attention to..."  I thought sure by the time he said this,we'd have passed the attraction.  But Wilmington has plenty of old architecture of all different styles, interesting steeples, solid warehouses, and plenty of porches.  

After lunch, our second expedition was by boat.  The Henrietta Three, modelled after a steamboat, carried us on a 1.5 hour trip down the Cape Fear River (I expected Robert DeNiro to appear on the deck - alas, no.)  The captain told stories of the old docks, the ferry that used to shuttle carriages across the Cape Fear, and the ship repair yards.  My favorite was a story of the vertical lift bridge,and how two cars got trapped on its middle span as it lifted for a passing ship.  One car had a woman in it who allegedly screamed the entire time (this was actually proven untrue - the woman corrected it saying she couldn't get a sound out).  The other car had a man who jumped off the span onto the fixed part of the bridge, watched his car go up, then fall off the span into the Cape Fear ... with his golf cubs in the trunk.  He was not happy about that.  Anyway, we got a great view of the modern docks, where ships come 15 miles from the ocean up the Cape Fear to leave their wares.  

After a refreshing swim in the hotel pool, we did dinner at Circa 1922.  We shared some wine and tapas - the duck pastrami in particular was fantastic.  Amy had grouper, and Pam had steak, which they reported to be fine.  Liza had a huge dish of English pea risotto, which everyone judged as the finest meal of the table.  The dill and herbs made it really shine.  Brad had a Asian platter, and the waiter joked it was supposed to be for "hefty men", but he finished it off with gusto.  (He didn't get the meal free - it's not that kind of resturant!)  I had the Southern classic Shrimp and Grits.  But yeah, the grits had melted cheese, and were the most awesome part.  Better than the grits of the previous night, even.  Brad remarked, "I need to taste your grits," and I said, "Not on the first date."  

Coming out of dinner, Amy and I felt a little goofy.  We decided to fake a head butt.  (How did we ever think this would be a good idea?  I dunno.) Only we were totally off in our judgment, and suddenly that head butt turned dangerously real.  Bonk!  The next few moments were unclear, due to brain trama.  The next thing I remember is we were laughing on the sidewalk.  Nothing celebrates America more appropriately than a good ol' head butt!  

We returned to our table at the swimming pool to find our places all saved and intact.  I was amazed.  At 9:00 we watched the fireworks, which were fired from behind the USS North Carolina.  They were pretty awesome!  Exploding shapes are this year's rage in fireworks - hearts, diamonds, stars, etc.  And our viewing angle was incredibly good, but we were pelted with what Amy called "Fireworks Junk".  Little pieces of ash and cardboard rained in our eyes, our hair, and our drinks.  None of it was burning.  That's always a plus.

Amy and I ended our day with a vanilla ice cream cone at the local Granola-eaters-coffee-shop-and-internet cafe.  It's like a little Ithaca follows us wherever we go.  

Wilmington, NC Day 1: Cape Fear!

Warning: the next few days are gonna have a lot of Cape Fear jokes.  This cannot be helped.

So what I'm doing down here on the Atlantic coast?  It's just pure vacation.  It's weird that people do this every year - they take a week off of work in the summer to see the sights, to rest, to eat good food.  Whenever I have done this in the past, it's been an anomoly, something I had to plans months for, and often was a logistical nightmare.  And I usually only did it wen I was at some sort of breaking point - where the choice was either go on vacation or go stark-raving mad.  Now, at least for the time being, it's becoming routine.  I can depend on it like the fact that a hill goes up for only so many blocks, then goes downhill for a bit.

Anyway, Amy's sister Pam and brother-in-law Brad invited us to do vacation with them this year.  (They have been avid followers of this blog, and now they wanted a starring role!)  A few weeks ago, the plans came together and we decided to go for Pam's home state of North Carolina and a beach vacation.  I've never been on a beach vacation.  I've seen the ocean (both Atlantic and Pacific) but I've never squished my toes in the sand or read a "beach book" or built sand castles or let the surf pound on me. It sounded cool.

So we booked a plane to Durham leaving at 5:40 AM.  We had to get up around 4:45, and that after a night of watching fireworks in Ithaca and not getting in until midnight.  Those of you who know Amy already realize what a tremendous feat this was for her, and if there were awards for heroic behavior in the face of adversity, she would get it.  We got to the airport at 5:10, and the desk clerk sneered, "You're tardy."  I would argue there is no such thing as tardy at 5:10 AM!

Anyway, Pam met us at the airport, and we had a nice Greek lunch (gyros, souvlaki) with the entire family - including their daughters Becky and Liza.  Becky having a work life that she couldn't ignore wouldn't be joining us, but Liza will.  We piled our stuff in the cars to head down to the coast.

Wilmington is on the Cape Fear River about 15 miles from where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  As everyone knows, it is named Cape Fear because if you pilot a boat down it with your family, you will get attacked by Robert Mitchum (or Robert DeNiro, if you're in the color version) and fear for your life.  Everything is named Cape Fear - Cape Fear Whole Foods Market, Cape Fear Community College. There's a Cape Fear Daycare, but it's full of bullies.  Sorry folks.  This is gonna get worse before it gets better.

OK, so definitely you want food affecionados to guide any vacation - this was instrumental in making Paris a great trip.  No exception here.  Through the storm of chain restaurants, and chefs who haven't worked out their mommy issues, Brad is our beacon.  He leads us to Manna Avenue on Market St..  Amy has a neon pink-purple cosmo, Brad has moonshine (it's hip these days), and I have the Shrub of the Day, which is a boozy concoction with bourbon, vinegar (!) and concord grapes.  All of a sudden life got slower.  It's as if we shoved the car into Southern Gear.

For dinner, Pam ordered Cornish Game Hen, which presented itself as a few sushi-sized pieces.  On the other side of the spectrum, I had The Porkshank Redemption, which was a huge, smoked barbecued pork shank served over grits.  The meat was boiling hot all the way to the bone, which is very unusual, and it tasted like smoked heaven (is there smoke in heaven?  In my version, yes!) .  Amy had grouper with an olive sauce.  Brad asked so many questions of the waiter, that I forget what he actually had.  But it was all close-your-eyes-while-you-eat good!

And then an after-dinner beach preview.  I stood there on the side as tons of water rolled up and over my feet, leaving a pile of sand.  In 10 minutes I was buried above my ankles in sand, but not having moved an inch.  I figure an hour or so, and I'd be up to my neck in sand like those guys in the Huey Lewis video.  (You know what I'm talking about - don't pretend that you don't!)  Isn't that cool?  You can basically run a vacation where all you do is stand still and get entertained.  For free!

But the day shut down early - our early morning rising had taken its toll on Amy and me.  We collapsed into bed, ready to greet the Fourth of July.

Boston Day 4: DIY Dinner

Perhaps I haven't been clear.  Yes, I am learning stuff!  After all I'm in the city of education ... where there's Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and MIT.  I have learned:

• I am staying at the very hotel where the Parker House roll was invented.  That fact is pretty indisputable.  The Hotel is called the Parker House.
• The first publicly funded school for African-American children was in Boston.
• Oh yeah, and Oracle SOA.  Which is why I'm here.  But I won't bore you with the geeky details.

It was a soggy day in Boston, so I didn't venture far over the lunch hour.  Just down to the African American Heritage museum, just around the corner in Beacon Hill.  The museum is in the old school house, and is right next to the African Meeting House, the oldest extant African-American-built church. 

I'm a big African-American history buff, and it was really cool standing in the meeting place where they came together and discussed, organized, worshiped and stood as a community.  When the Fugitive Slave act sent bounty hunters into the city pilching people from the streets (many of whom were NOT fugitive slaves), they stood by each other here.  When soldiers went to the Massachusetts Regiment in the civil war, the community took care of their families left behind.  And the doctrine of "separate is NOT equal" was born here, over a hundred years before Brown vs. Board of Education.  I find African-American history inspiring ... I may not "get" it on some level because I haven't dealt with racism, but I get how daunting the whole task of civil rights was, and still is.  That was lunch well spent.

So let's face it.  I have been a lazy ass when it comes to dinner.  I haven't lifted a finger to grill the salmon or drizzle aoli on the plates.  So I decided to go someplace where I can share the duties of the meal a little bit ... and so I ended up at the Q Restaurant for some Mongolian Hot Pot!

I have never MHP before, but now I'm a big fan.  Here's the setup.  You sit at a table with a smooth cooktop burner in the middle.  You order broth - for mine I got a "split pot" of regular and spicy broth.  (Spicy is on the right, you can see all the peppers floating on the top.  Ouchy!)  You get your choice of thinly sliced raw meat (I picked short rib), raw noodles and raw vegetables.  You take your chopsticks or a ladle and you dunk your meat, noodles or vegetables in the broth for about two minutes until they're done.   That's all it takes!  The flavor of the broth is heavenly, full of ginger and hot pepper, garlic and spices, and it is infused throughout the food.  Everything's fresh and very hot this way.  You get sauces to throw on top.  And if you want, you have a bown to just ladle up some broth and make yourself a side bowl of soup to munch on when your other stuff is cooking. 

"This is how the Mongolians conquered the world!" goes the blurb in the menu.  I think it might've had something more to do with chopping people's heads off, but whatever.  I would've been one happy conqueror eating this every day!

This being my last real overnight in Boston, I celebrated with high-end dessert over at Finale.  Peanut Butter pie ... and just the right amount of cream, and not too much sugar to get in the way of the peanutty taste!  The plate was littered with peanut brittle on the side and chocolate ganache in front.  A work of art!  Paired with a glass of 10 year old Tawney Port, it was the end of a perfect day. 

One more to go, and I'm back on the train to New York. 

Boston Day 3: We Are Going to Screw Up!

Amy taught me a certain method traveling in Paris, and I use it pretty much all the time.  Every day have a good breakfast, loaded with carbs and (if you can get it) butter.  A croissant does just nicely.  Drink
juice and lots of water.  Walk everywhere.  Skip lunch, and instead eat some trail mix occasionally when you're hungry.  Then eat a really nice dinner rather early in the evening.  Doing it this way you don't have to exercise - it's taken care of by walking everywhere - and you don't spend gobs on food.

The problem in America is getting a good carb-loaded breakfast that won't weigh you down unnecessarily.  Dunkin' Donuts?  I don't think so.  Here in Boston there are two within 3 blocks of each other.  I'd rather eat my Oracle Student Workbook.  And Capitol Coffee House wasn't doing it for me, so I plugged in "Bakery" into my Smart Phone and let it choose my destiny.  I first ended up at Just Croissants across the Boston Commons ... closed.  Next stop the Vanille Cafe in Beacon Hill.  I walked past the swan pond and Cheers and spent about 10 minutes looking for the door. 

And the angels descended from heaven and said, "Lo!  I bring you tidings of great joy!" Butter everywhere!  Mille feuilles, strawberry kayaks, pastel-colored petit fours, and a display case full of French Breakfast pastry.  I got on my knees and thanked the Lord!  And I could order in ENGLISH!  I got a croissant and an Escargot Raisins (a raisin danish - it looks like a snail.)  It was about 90% of the buttery goodness of the Paris counterpart, which was close enough for me, and as good as you're probably going to get in America.  If the dough was just a tad tougher and the taste toward American butter instead of French (less dairy, clover flavor), .... well, it was still the moist, flaky, airy croissant that I had fell in love with.  Tony The Tiger says Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and even if his particular version of breaskfast sucks, he's quite right.  I felt satisfied all the way to dinner time.

Noontime was a bust.  I mapped out a course to In Your Ear, a record store with a supposed inventory of 250,000 CD's.  I need some Elis Regina and Bossa Nova is a little bit hard to find these days, even in the era of widespread digital music. I took the T to Harvard Square ... only to find the store closed for the winter break, being a student-led affair.  Bummer. 

But Harvard Square is refreshing, and I got to see the legendary Clover restaurant. Clover started as a squadron of food trucks that brought fast, flavorful vegan sandwiches to the masses of hungry students.  They were extremely popular, and opened a sit-down restaurant.  On the window was a hand lettered epistle in white paint, "When I opened this restaurant I knew just one thing.  'We are going to screw up.'"  It went on to tell what things did get screwed up, and offered a pleading for time to fix them.  Restaurants can be one of the most dishonest, covert places in society, so this was kind of refreshing. 

For dinner, I landed at Lineage in the very hip Coolidge Corner neighborhood.  I'm a big fan of the farm-to-table restaurant, which is the big thing in Ithaca these days.  From an environmental standpoint, it makes sense to get your food as close to where and when you eat it as possible.  But I think, like vegetarian food, it has its own merits that you discover only after getting into it.  (Choosing food solely on moral grounds is ... ironically, humanly unsustainable!)  First, I think the body craves things that are "in season" and
going against it, like eating peaches in the winter, makes it somehow taste non-peachy.  Second, food that makes a very short trip is fresher.  (Duh!)  Third, and I think this is the most important, art flourishes amidst restrictions.  It makes one think deeper,become more creative.  It provokes surprise.  It's anti-corporate, anti-consistent.

So we get to Lineage, where farm-to-table worked perfectly.  Everything was in sync, from the smell of wood smoke in a contemporary fireplace, to the daily-generated menus, to the enthusiasm of all the staff.  I had grilled salmon with bernaise on a bed of assorted vegetables and the freshness of everything was astounding.  Lemme talk about the parsnips for a second.  Parsnips are your quintessential winter root vegetable. Here they came in chunks.  I bit into one that was soft on the outside, then hard on the inside like an underdone potato chunk.  It was weird at first, but it's brilliant!  Parsnips cooked all the way through have no taste.  Raw parsnips are intense but hard to chew and swallow.  But cook them halfway and you get just the perfect amount of parsnip sweetness.  Incredible! 

Coolidge Center was very beautiful, and I stayed around for awhile.  An Oreo ice cream sundae, followed by a movie at the local arthouse (The Descendants - an excellent movie if you like Alexander Payne, who's one of my personal favorites), and a ride on the T back home ... man!  I could live here. 

Boston Day 2: Come To The Dark Side!

At 3:00 AM I woke to a loud buzzing.  My fist immediately went to the alarm clock, banging on it in a half-awake stupor, but the buzzing wouldn't shut off.  A speaker in my room blared: "IF YOU ARE ON THE FIRST FLOOR, PLEASE EXIT THE BUILDING.  IF YOU ARE ON ANY OTHER FLOOR, PLEASE GATHER YOUR BELONGINGS AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS."  Then the sirens wailed into hearing.

Great.  About 2 minutes later, the same speaker said, "The Hotel and Boston Fire Department have verified that all is clear.  Please resume your activities."  Meaning banging my fist on the alarm clock?  I thought of all the activities one could be doing at 3 AM that could be rudely interrupted by a fire, and drifted back off to sleep.

A minute later, again over the speaker.  "The Hotel and Boston Fire Department have verified that all is clear.  Please resume your activities." Nice.  Then a minute later.  "The Hotel and Boston Fire Department have verified that all is clear.  Please resume your activities." Repeat that every minute for the next hour.  ARRRGHH!  At 4 AM, I was finally allowed to sleep.

At 7 AM, groggy and miffed, I stumbled out of the hotel down to my new regular coffee joint, The Capitol Coffee Room.  Their muffins and croissants are not really very good there, but I'd rather poke out my eyes than go to Dunkin' Donuts.  I consulted the computer for more Boston Weirdness ... this was turning from a curiosity into an obsession.   Then it was back to Oracle University.  The view from Oracle University is pretty darn nice, as you can see on the right. It's hard not to daydream a little. Once I did my lectures and homework assignments, I was ready to explore.

At noon I hopped on the Green Line to visit the Darth Vadar building.  It is called this because ... well look at it and it should be pretty obvious.  I couldn't really see it well from the street level, so I looked for the tallest building in the neighborhood.  That would be the Prudential Tower, 52 stories tall. I bought a ticket to the top floor, and found the view a lot less white-knuckle-producing than the towers in Chicago.  From there, I could snap a really good picture of Lord Vadar.  You can almost hear the breath whistling out of the windows.  "Agggggg-haggggh.  Agggggg-haggggh.  Luke  I am your fath-ah!"

I just wanna say ... I Love, Love, Love the T!  I was able to get all the way from Beacon Hill to Back Bay, up the Prudential Tower, back down and to Beacon Hill again (with a quick stop for Starbucks Espresso) all in the space of an hour.  And all with my $15/week pass for all the rides you can handle.  I don't care if Charlie had problems with the subway (and you can pay homage to him by buying a Charlie Card).  I love it. It's part of my new love for public transportation in general.

For dinner, I decided to hike out to the Boston University turf.  The Boston Vegetarian Society recommended the Grasshopper for Asian Vegan cuisine.  Sounds like a plan!  The campus was a little dead this time of year (classes start next week).   But the night air supported a brisk 2 mile walk, making me one famished patron.  I ordered the Grasshopper Supreme and texted a picture to Amy ... who concluded "It looks like Animal from the Muppets or Jack the Pumpkin King."  Or at the very least glazed Duck and Bananas!  In fact, the Grasshopper Supreme is two long skinny eggplants, steamed and sliced up the middle to resemble a squid, a portobello mushroom cap in the middle, carrot slices, and a "hairpiece" of asparagus atop a bed of spinach ... the whole of which is smothered in brown sauce.  Think Garlic Vegetables.  It wasn't spectacular, but it was a lot of good wholesome food and it was just what the doctor ordered! 

I ended up back at the The Last Hurrah for single malt scotch (Ardbeg - I'm a creature of habit) and hot nuts.  Love those hot nuts. This will be an endless supply of jokes, I'm sure. 

Boston, Day 1: The World's Ugliest Building

La Vita Nuova is a lesser-known work by Dante.  It means "The New Life" and it'sa very romantic, heatfelt mess of sonnets and prose.  I feel like I'm living in it right now.  In the past week I've sold my house, moved to Ithaca, and started a new job at Cornell.  Everything feels new. 

And now I'm in Boston doing training for Oracle SOA Server ... I thought this would be all-consuming but our class is small and the instructor is very funny, informative, and kind enough to let us roam free on our lunch hour.  So I'm finding more free time than I thought I'd have.

Rather than eat lunch, I started walking around the Freedom Trail and ended up in Old South Meeting Hall.  This is where the rabble rousers discussed the Boston Tea Party before carrying it out.  The Meeting Hall has a long history of debating free speech and the merits of same.  Evidently in the 30's there was an outcry against Margaret Sanger, the champion of birth control and founder of Planned Parenthood, and a lot of people were pissed off that she was issued a gag at the city limits of Boston and was not allowed to speak.  A debate about "Boston-banning" occurred here as well.  I guess that sounds like Boston has more a history of censorship than anything ... but really, whereas other cities quietly banned that stuff or were just not interested, Bostonites dragged all their dirty laundry out in the open.

I found a book in the gift shop on "Weird Boston", and they mentioned the World's Ugliest Building, an honor bestowed upon the new Boston City Hall, built in the 60's.  Which means I had to go see it!  And man is it ugly.  Butt-ugly.  It's from the "Look How Hip I Am" school of architecture, trying hard not to be boxy buy failing miserably.  If that weren't all, it doesn't fit in with the surrounding architecture at all.  Yuck!

But if one can balance out the ugliness of a building withe the beauty of dinner, I did it!  I just had the best fish ever at Atlantic Fish Company.  They are pretty obsessive about the fish freshness there, and their menu changes daily to reflect it.  Today their catch was Red Snapper grilled and served weith butter-garlic sauce, and MAN!  It snapped my head back in amazement!  Most fish is flaky and kind of reminds you of an onion whose layers peel away with a very thin slimy film in the middle. This fish was more like beef or chicken - stringy and dense.  It was kind of like the duck we had in France - it barely resembled the classic American version.  It wasn't strongly fishy, yet it didn't taste "mild" - e.g. like water.  It was just the right amount of seafood.

On the side were mashed potatoes with shrimp and calamata olives.  A bed of perfectly-grilled asparagus graced the top.  A glass of Poilly Fume was the perfect pairing - tasting as strong as Pineapple juice on the first sip, then a pleasant aftertaste like dish soap (which sounds bad, but it's more like what smells good about dish soap, and nothing else).  For dessert - fruit crisp made with the fruit of the day, fresh from the oven and worked over with a blowtorch like creme brulee.  They bring it to your table and top it with a scoop of ice cream at the last possible moment so you don't get any meltage.

I ended up in the Whiskey Bar of the Omni hotel, reading an essay on the pianist Fred Hersch and nursing a single malt Islay Scotch - rich and peaty and smoky like a good one should be.  It was good, but was exemplrary were the nuts.  They toast them in the oven (and good ones only - macadamias, cashews, almonds) before serving them in a small bowl to you.

If you've ever put your fingers in a bowl of hot nuts, you know what a joy it is.  Eee gads.  Did I write that?  Oh well.  Not every sentence needs to be perfect in La Vita Nuova.