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.