All Closed Up

I've had nightly chats with K&A about the dogs since leaving them Friday afternoon—which was very, very hard, by the way, stupid dogs—and I'm pleased to report that Spackle's wound has been comporting itself well if he and Hoover haven't been—quite—model dogs. As of today the drain hole left in Spackle's hip wound is completely sealed, and nothing seems to be infected. Hoover's ear is, I'm sure, perfectly fine—it didn't even get a mention in tonight's call.

Spackle hasn't been an evil dog in any way—he's just been himself, rolling in fresh horseshit when he can't be bathed (A. used a deodorizing spray on a towel that she rubbed over him until he stank less), and getting all four paws in the pond when he's not allowed to swim—and only at the last minute, when A. was preparing herself to go in after him, heeding her commands and reluctantly retreating.

Hoover hasn't been an evil dog either—he's just been HIMself—which means he's decided he likes the Jerome Creek place and it could only be better if he were Top Dog. He's not going to be; everyone else, humans and dogs alike, are banded together against him taking on that role. Nevertheless, he's trying for it, which is trying the patience of Sadie at least, who is top dog.

Things here in Seattle are lovely and calm.

Improving

Hoover of course never showed any signs of needing rest, and is well on the mend, only yelping once yesterday when someone briefly caught his stitched ear. As for Spackle, he obviously has much farther to go, but is also showing signs of being well on the mend, and quite relieved to have the lumps off of him. He even, much AGAINST doctor's orders as well as my own, JUMPED INTO THE BACK OF THE 4-RUNNER last night as we were heading out for a picnic dinner, leaving the other dogs behind. BAD DOG. YOU NEED TO LET YOUR SUTURES REST.

For all you people who've had pets or children or partners recovering from surgeries and know some of the signs to watch for, I'm pleased to report that he's eating well (wet food, mixed with a little dry), drinking water and piddling normally, and pooping normally as well. And he is showing all signs of enjoying his exalted invalid status.

Good dogs.

Sheesh. You Dogs.

I'm in Jerome Creek right now for 5 nights—which has turned into 6—while K&A are present. This was going to simply be a visit where I helped out a little with things that were specifically needed (there's only so much I can anticipate when I'm here on my own, outside of taking care of animals), rode some horses, and played with my dogs in the countryside before leaving them here for six weeks for K&A to take care of.

Yes, the shoe's on the other foot now, as it were, and they have kindly agreed to watch Spackle and Hoover while Ian and I go to our weddings/trips to see friends/chemotherapy for our pasture over the next several weeks.

Last fall when I was here for a length of time, of course, was when Spackle developed his serious, inexplicable illness and spent nights in the clinic and the WSU Vet School hospital. We ultimately gave him Prednisone for his ailments and that seems to have done the trick—for the past almost-year he's been quite well and happy. Years ago during our first visit here, Spackle caught a stick in the back of his throat and needed a vet in an emergency—he had not pierced his brain, however. Sometime in the middle past he tore an ACL out here but, not knowing what was going on, I didn't take him to a vet for that . . . but I should've.

His recent issues have been apparently minor—just a couple of benign cysts—one on his left hip and one just next to his spine. Our vet has been checking on these; indeed, checked them a week before I brought the dogs here, and the cysts were stable.

Well, the night before we came, last Friday, the cyst on Spackle's hip was larger. Instead of being the size of a marble, it was the size of two marbles. I squeezed it and some fluid came out, but it was like blood serum—not stinky, and mostly clear. Saturday, once arriving here, I squeezed it again, and again some clearish, non-smelly fluid came out . . . but by Sunday morning it was a large puffy patch the size of half a bagel, and Spackle didn't eat any breakfast. Uh-oh.

Sometime during the day it ruptured, and then Spackle started licking at it, and it was obvious by Sunday afternoon that a vet would have to be consulted. Thank you, Spackle, for making it all the harder for me to want to leave you for six weeks—not only because now I'll worry about you, but because you have left extra work for your hosts.

Hoover, apparently not wanting to be left out of the fun, managed to rip a 1cm slash in one of his ear flaps, in a flamboyant cavort away from chasing cows and under a barbed wire fence. I'd like to think this has larned him a lesson, but he doesn't seem to be that sensitive of his injury, and certainly didn't make a sound when it happened. I found out about it by reaching down to grab him so he wouldn't head back at the cows, and coming away with my hands covered in blood. He's mostly black, and so stains of any sort are pretty invisible. At any rate, he doesn't keep his head still, and so the ear would stop dripping, and then he'd shake his head, and fresh spots of crimson would appear wherever he'd been standing. It looked, as K said coming into his white-painted farmhouse, as if someone had been butchering chickens there.

I had a relatively sleepless night Sunday night (read a good article in Harper's about concealed weapons) while dogs licked and snored, and got a call into the vet yesterday morning early. They called back soon after 8am, by 9am I had the dogs in the Potlatch examining room, and they both had surgeries.

Spackle's was major—at least the cyst that had erupted. It had turned from nothing to a huge, infected, spidering mass of tendrils growing through his subcutaneous fat, attaching to blood sources, and generally showing beginning signs of world (or at least dog) domination—all of which needed to be cut out. The cyst on his spine, on the other hand, was completely contained and easy. But still left a sizeable, Frankensteinian bald patch.

Hoover's was minor, and the few stitches seem to be holding back the tides of blood. He's slightly more klutzy because of his round of anesthesia, but seems none the worse for the experience, and quite a bit the better. This was interesting, too: when I left the dogs yesterday morning, they were put into the same cage, because there was only one left and it was the big one. Someone came in and gave Spackle some drugs, because his surgery was going to be first, and he started to fall asleep. This evidently alarmed Hoover, who, much to my surprise and gratitude, became very protective of his older brother when they came back to get him for his procedure. Evidently, Hoover stood over Spackle and did some serious GRRRing at the people coming to get him. No one was hurt, and Hoover's worry was of course misplaced. But wasn't that sweet? Who knew he even cared???

Dogs are now back, and Hoover is a little subdued, and Spackle is more subdued, but in happy, healthy dog ways. Spackle didn't wait for a lift from the back of the car and leapt out, but managed not to faceplant in the driveway, so I think he's going to be fine.

And I will say this for them: Well done, The Dogs, having these procedures in rural north Idaho. The entire cost of the experience, including Spackle's two surgeries and Hoover's stitches, anesthesia for both, a night in the clinic for both, suppers and breakfasts, pills, a 12-pack of wet food in case Spackle's not interested in dry at the moment, and a lampshade collar in case Spackle licks: $406.99. Probably no more than a third of what it would've been in Seattle.

The Stuff of Life

This is really a post that belongs on both The
Dilettante Traveler and I Thought I Was Done With This. I've been thinking a lot recently about the things that I like to do with my time, with my life. I like the horses, of course. My 20-year high school reunion was just last weekend and people I haven't seen in 20 years asked what I was up to and I said horseback riding and they nodded knowingly. "You always were into horses," they said. Which is a little weird, I suppose, since my being "into" horses has never involved the insane show circuit . . . it was, I have thought, a much more low-key "into horses" . . . but nevertheless, it's true. I am and I have been, into horses.

I like the fiber arts, if you will. Knitting hats and sweaters, most recently getting myself into the Fair Isle designs—which take a lot more time than the simple hats I've been doing for the past several years. I've also been sewing a lot—glitter bags for everyone I can think of (if I haven't thought of you and you'd like one, drop me a line)—and recently, crazy-patterned pillowcases because we've started using more than two pillows on our bed—hence, more than the number of cases that came with our sheet sets. Also, we like to have our pillowcases hold our down pillows together a bit—and so we only want them to be 18 inches wide. I've already had to alter most of our existing cases. I also bought some fabric just the other day to make some scrub-like lounge pants—much prettier, of course, than scrubs (particularly Dr Jason's black, Grim Reaper ones), but the same basic, loose-fitting drawstring design.

I've been finding it satisfying to keep the yard moderately tidy as well; it's been quite the season for lawn growth—particularly if your lawn consists primarily of dandelions—and twice I've had to do an entire sweep with the weedwacker before I could even begin to make any headway with our rotary mower.

As for the less domestic pleasures, well, travel. What can I say—I find it exhilarating to visit new cultures and new locations. The ability to fly around the world, observing people in all their natural habitats, and immersing myself in those habitats—I love that. And so, while I've been reveling in domesticity, I've also been making plans for World Domination. To that end, friend MS and I (you may remember her from the most recent day of lostness in Jerome Creek) are going to be taking an Equitours trip in Australia in November—horseback riding (with guides!) for a week from inn to inn along the Sunshine Coast. We're then going to pop over to New Zealand's South Island and add some more rides—in this case following in the footsteps of Strider and the Hobbits— and visit my friend C in Wellington (and, in fact, actually get to visit the place where I "moved" in 2007 when Ian and I sold our cars and rented our house and left town for several months). And I can't help being excited about this part: it will be my 6^th continent within a year. I love my life.

And then, in April, KENYA! Ian and I have been wanting to go back to Africa for years—well, East Africa, since Cabo Verde last January certainly counts as Africa—and we've managed to finagle an unbelievable plane trip: two BA tickets in Club World, Seattle to Nairobi and back, for the price of only one set of airline miles. I tell you, if you can figure out how to work the system, the system REALLY works for you.

So . . . I'm happy. I'm still feeling a little anxiety associated with things that I commit to doing for other people . . . or even mention I may be interested in thinking about doing for other people (the problem seems to be my personal definition of "commitment," rather than any external expectations). I'm slowly, as well, figuring out the benefits of a life of scheduled days off (I have chosen to "work through" my day off this week, in the interests of, well, horses), and I'm learning to stop feeling guilty about enjoying the path I am so fortunate to have been given.

My Inlaws Kick Your Inlaws Ass

Okay, I've been home for ten days now, and I've given up on writing anything new about the horses from my last Jerome Creek trip, but I would be doing a disservice to Ian's parents if I didn't share how badass they are when it comes to long trail rides that include, well, a bit of difficulty at the home stretch.

First off, J is 65 and D is 75. They've both ridden enough before that they've retained muscle knowledge, and they are both healthy and active in their day-to-day lives, so an hour or so on horseback is a pleasure much more than it is a penance.

We went on an average-length ride (5 ½ miles) the day after they arrived, taking the fateful trail J and I had been on a couple years ago when she fell off her horse, I flew off mine, and we both had issues for months after (hip for her, tailbone for me). I cleverly took us counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, in the hopes that J would not feel the stress of returning to the scene of an accident. She assured me that she had absolutely no idea where she was; that she was pretty much following me blindly; and that she not only wouldn't recognize one curve of grassy road in a thousand miles of grassy road; she would also in no way be able to make it back home.

D thought that he had a pretty good idea of where home was, however, and pointed off in a direction ahead. "Nope," I said, "not even close. Home is almost directly behind us." It didn't help anyone's sense of direction that the sun was hiding, of course, but still—it's hard. It took me years to figure out where I was, and even now, it only (as I hope I've made clear here in this blog) works most of the time.

And so, Ride 1 was uneventful and beautiful. The next day we were all set for Ride 2, which was going to be a little more ambitious—steeper hills, narrower tracks, clearer clearcuts, sweepinger views, an extra couple miles—but still well within our purview, because it was a circle I'd actually taken before. Although not, as of yet, this year.

Have I mentioned that I clearly do not run a 5-Star Luxury Establishment, All Your Needs Met Before You Are Even Aware Of Them?

The first 2/3 of our ride were lovely. J really connects with Snickers and finds her to be a sweet lady, and Shadow behaves well for D. "See if she'll let you open the gate," I suggested to D, our first afternoon out, "without having to get off of her." He kneed Shadow up to the gate and reined her in, and she stood perfectly for him to unlatch it, then stepped back efficiently so he could ride through (we didn't need to close it until we got home). She does not do that for me—she makes me work for it, walking this way and that, standing with the gate just out of reach, backing at the last minute when I almost have the clasp worked out, then, around the 7^th attempt, standing, bored, rolling her eyes and sighing, as if to ask "why didn't you say so???" Sikem was also behaving, only balking a little when I rode him away from the mares and up and down various side trails so that I could get them charted with the GPS. We all, human and equine, enjoyed the several-minute walk/trot through the clearcut, seeing the last snow on the distant mountains, the new barn being built on a nearby hill, various birds.

And then we came to the woods.

From the beginning, there was a tree across our path. A giant tree but, there in the margin between woods and clearcut, easy to walk around. However, there followed another huge tree, then a smaller tree that we could see down the hill. I sent my troops back to open air and left Sikem in the care of D, and the gorp (trail mix, for those of you not from the PNW) I'd brought along in the care of J. I was beginning to worry about them—going back the way we came would be a long ride, and it was approaching Taylor dinner time. Having been married to a Taylor for almost 9 years now, I know that this is serious business. I hoped the gorp would keep things under control while I scouted.

Well, scouting was ultimately completely successful because I'm writing this from my desk in Seattle, and the Taylors Sr are safely back home in Bellingham. But really all it did was allow me to clear one tree with my handy saw, just enough to get us deeply enough into the woods to be committed. The trail was AWFUL. There were trees down everywhere, and it's a steep hill. Even when we reached Maple Creek, downed trees kept us neatly away from the well-established road there. We ended up, with the assistance of Shadow, picking our way across the creek and up a slope to end up on the road we'd come in on, a place where I've always wished for a trail, but could never see one. There really isn't one. You can check out our route here on my map. It's JCR6 and JCR6part2 because for some reason the GPS cut off in the middle. More than 9 miles, guys!

I was able to take us the rest of the way home with no more mishaps, however, and I'm pretty sure that was the night we went to the Hoo Doo. Everyone's tradition at Jerome Creek now is to have one dinner at the Hoo Doo . . . which meant that I had three dinners at the Hoo Doo this time around . . . which might be a bit much, etc. etc.

Anyway, Well Done the Taylors!

(and with this, back to ITIW)

 

The Pack

As always for me, one of the great pleasures of spending time in Idaho is the intimate interaction with the animals (specifically the horses and dogs, of course). Here are some of the charming/humorous/annoying things I experienced with the canine group this time around.

First of all, Spackle was very healthy, unlike last fall when we thought he was dying. This was a relief and a pleasure. He is, of course, a simple soul—happy to fetch, happy to swim, happy to go for walks in the woods (where he keeps running back along the trail to make sure I'm following and everything is in order), and happy to go on the rides when I've planned for a gentle one that won't tax 9-year-old bionic hips—with the one exception being when Ian was still at Jerome Creek with me, in which case Spackle took careful stock of the situation— one horse and three dog companions already for me, no one for Ian—and elected to stay behind. He ate horseshit, but, unfortunately they all do.

Second, Hoover. Hoover, of course, is absolutely in his element. It's the cutest thing in the world to see him actually worn out at the end of a day—completely sound asleep, eyes scrunched closed, paws all together in puppy fetal, occasionally issuing muted grrrs and yips, his paws fluttering, as he relives the joys of the day—chasing deer and ground squirrels and wrestling with Sadie, leaping in and out of mud puddles and creeks, smelling the richest, most amazing smorgasbord of organic smells, and extra food at the end of the day because he's run a thousand miles. Judging from the scrapes and punctures we can see, if Hoover were hairless he'd be a solid mass of scars by now. Looking at my own self here just now, if I weren't wearing clothes on our excursions, I probably would be a mess, too. I currently have a healing scratch on my neck, several on my feet and hands, a bruise on the top of my right thigh, and a giant bruise (about five inches long) on the inside of my left knee. Like mother, like dog.

Third, Sadie. Not being a Lab, but instead being an Australian Shepherd, Sadie is interested in observing situations and, rather than blindly following orders for what may or may not end up being a tasty treat (which she may or may not deign to take even if it is), making decisions for herself—with a certain gravitas, a direct, calculating stare, and, perhaps, eventual compliance if she feels that either 1) the treat would be good AND she would like it or 2) it's not worth arguing about with a mere human. She has to take medication for incontinence, poor thing, and of course recognized immediately a couple years ago that the "liver-flavored dog-friendly" taste of the pill does not mask the fact that it's not food (the Labs, of course, drool over it and jostle each other to take it from my hand). For the first evening, Ian fed the dogs and, not seeing instructions to the contrary, merely put her ¼ pill in with her dinner. She ignored it as she daintily ate her kibble piece by piece—the Labs slavering around her, having all hoovered down their meals in seconds—and it was the one thing left in the bowl at the end. Before Tessa could muscle her way in, Ian snatched up the pill. He thought for a minute, then went and found some bacon grease to dip it in. THAT was very exciting—no hesitation on Sadie's part as she opened her mouth and took the pill . . . and sucked off the bacon grease and spit out the medicine. Ian remembered the Pill Pockets we had brought for Spackle, though—vile, oily-slimy, stinky gelatinous things—stuffed the now-disintegrating ¼ pill into the bottom of one, and held it out to her. Bingo. Sucked down, no hesitation. Take that, Sadie! Outsmarted! She is also very cute, and very sweet, though, and was the first dog (of three; the other two stayed on the ground) up on the picnic table with me when I went out to sunbathe one day, stretched out against my bare side, tickling me with her long hair.

Fourth, Tessa. Tessa met us as we drove into the yard, barking loudly and hysterically, of course, and who could blame her—aside from a morning feeding and letting out, and an evening feeding and putting in, she hadn't seen any humans for two days. And she is the guard. And she is the one who barks all the time, anyway. I rolled down my window and called out "HI TESSA!" and her face and barks immediately changed, from businesslike and warning to ecstatic and relieved. A friend! Someone to take care of things! Even compared to Spackle, Tessa has the best facial expressions. She is very clear about joy, contrition, disappointment, and ingratiating-ness. If you're having a bad time of it (as I occasionally have been since Tessa has arrived at Jerome Creek), she, of all the dogs, is the one who first comes over to rest her head on your knee and stare up into your eyes in mute sympathy. She also still eats anything remotely resembling food, and as quickly as possible before she is discovered—from places you had no idea she could reach. She therefore appears to be a pretty big, lumbering dog (even her ear flaps are plush), but she's quite athletic and is the first in any car at the first sign of an outing.

Fifth and Sixth, Dusty and Kalluk. These dogs belong to G&N, and theoretically were supposed to stay at their house, but Dusty (the girl) would frequently come down to hang out with all of us. I would go up to let them out of their barn and feed them in the morning, give them each a treat and tell them to stay home, and leave. Thirty minutes later, Dusty would arrive on our porch. I couldn't blame her. Ian and I took the five dogs for a hike up the mountain one day in our car, and Dusty was thrilled to be a part of the pack. Several days later, after Ian was gone, Dusty came down one morning, and then after a bit of time, disappeared. I assumed she'd gone home, although it hadn't happened before. At any rate, I didn't think too much about it. Several hours later I went with my inlaws out to start collecting horses for a ride. "Why'd you put Dusty in your car?" asked my father-in-law. "What?" I replied, then looked at my car. Sure enough, there was Dusty, in the back, standing at attention, waiting for the next AWESOME thing to happen. She had managed to jump and scrabble her way up the side of my car and in through one of the mostly-open back windows. From her experience, that was the place to be for some fun, and she was not about to miss out.

On the other hand, Kalluk never came down. After a couple days, I started to feel bad for him and so on several occasions all dogs went up to the top of the lonely mountain and we all went for a hike in his woods. He was a big sweetie and always very happy to see us, but seemed to have a sense of his responsibilities that Dusty didn't share. One evening, Ian and I were late getting up to feed him and put him in (Dusty was with us, of course), and it was almost dark when we arrived at the top of the hill. He was nowhere to be seen. "Kalluk! KALLUK! LUKEY!!" I yelled, and "WOOF!" came from the woods. A moment later, there he was wagging and milling about me, pleased to get his dinner and go to bed. None of the other dogs have ever told me they're coming. I was completely charmed.

Lost and Found

Ian started out driving when we went to Jerome Creek together two weeks ago. I had been continuing my stressful, anxious times, even though April, my month of rest, had ended and May was in full swing, and so I was quite happy to ride (and occasionally point out errors in the way Ian was operating the car). At the Hatton Creek Rest Area at the junction of 26 and 395, I considered taking my own keys with me while I went to piddle and Ian went to piddle the dogs, but before I got to digging too deeply in my purse, I decided that was a ridiculous idea. We were going to be at most 100 yards apart; if I finished before the dogs, I could just go to meet them.

At K&A's, we mostly used their little Nissan farm pickup because we were mostly driving hay and dogs up and down a mountain, and so I didn't again think of my keys until the end of the first week, when we took Ian to the airport between Pullman and Moscow. As he was packing up and we (and his parents, who had arrived that afternoon to spend the weekend with me) were collecting ourselves for the journey into town, it gradually turned out that my keys were nowhere to be found, at least in a timely fashion. No matter; Ian used his and drove us to dinner and the airport.

There was a brief moment of thankful relief in the airport as Ian and I remembered, just before he passed through security, that I really needed those keys of his to get all the rest of us back home.

Over the next several days I looked through all the bags I'd brought (something like 24,006); I dug multiple times under the seats in the car; I looked over and under every surface in the farmhouse. I even found a number for the regional authority which oversaw Hatton Creek Rest Area and called them, just in case I had, in fact, taken my own keys for our 100-yard separation and then left them dangling in the restroom stall. Nothing.

In the last few days of the trip, I retraced my steps through the eastern Palouse, but no one had found keys. And here's the thing: it's a HUGE ring of keys. I look like a jailer when I'm carrying them around. They should've been very hard to misplace. I decided I'd find them when I packed up everything to go.

Well, of course I didn't. I had the additional challenge in packing up to collect everything Ian had left when he flew out: he was only taking a carry-on, and so lots of things were left around the house where he'd last used them—an accordion; an ergonomic keyboard rubber-banded to a sort of lap desk Ian had sawed; a pair of Vibram Five Fingers—gathering dust and doghair and becoming so much a part of the general scene of the place that I feared I'd simply overlook them. Nevertheless, even on heightened awareness, nothing keylike appeared.

The Colfax Chevron didn't have them.

Hatton Creek, even with a personal stop, didn't have them.

Blustery's didn't have them.

And, home again, and everything unpacked and put away and the car scoured again (well, not in a way that made it clean at all), there was still no sign of them. Our safe has a double lock system—the combination, and a round key. I usually just use the combination, but when we're going away, I usually lock the key lock as well. FORTUNATELY, I hadn't done that this time. I have one key for the safe, on my key chain; the other I gave to my brother for safe keeping (ha ha) when we "moved to New Zealand" a few years ago, and it's long gone. Anyway, I was able to retrieve the information about the safe which I store in the safe and order new keys (not a bad idea anyway), and everything else was pretty replaceable, so I stopped worrying about it too much.

I've recently been rereading the five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, and there are all sorts of coincidences taking place all the time for Arthur Dent. People and things turning up when and where they're least expected, and that's what happened to me.

I opened the door to our linen closet this morning, to change the sheets on our bed, and there, just inside, lying in a big obvious heap, were my keys. Now, there was absolutely no reason I would've needed to be in the linen closet the day we left for Jerome Creek, or, indeed, any days just before.

Obviously eddies in the space-time continuum. Who knows what he was doing with my keys.

Addendum: two notes about giving a safe key to my brother--the joke was a pun on safe. To really take advantage of my opportunity for bad jokes, I should've written "safe keyping". It was not a dig at my brother who, in fact, spurred by this entry, went in search and found the second key that I gave him years ago. So now I'll have four.

Home Again

Home safe after a GLORIOUS last ride. Bareback on Shadow, the air hazy but light, cool but not cold, all four dogs in attendance, MS and Snickers also delighting, gallops and brush-popping and I felt like a part of my horse. Heaven.

Weather-Enforced Rest

Yesterday was the longest ride I've been on here, coming in at just over 4 hours and around 11 miles. The ride I intended for friend MS and me to take was probably only about 3 hours and maybe 8 miles, which still would've been longish . . . but would've involved many fewer unbelievably steep climbs up unknown clearcuts and also many fewer precipitous descents through abundant and scratchy conifers and thick underbrush in a desperate bid for something—anything—familiar (well done the mares!), so that we could return home and have (eventually, after a scheduled pick-up of G&N in Moscow) wine and hot food for dinner, instead of having to hope for a few leftover grubs in a bear-mangled, rotted, fallen tree.

I had my GPS on during the entire ride, tracking our course, and when I realized that I had NO IDEA where I was, I tried to look at it for information on where we should go. It's a somewhat rudimentary app, however, and doesn't actually include a map on it when it's mapping—you only get the map when you upload the file to your computer back in the safety (assuming you reach it) of your home—and so the best I could do was look at the line it was drawing and draw the conclusion that I somehow needed to figure out how to go south and slightly east, to connect up the more or less featureless circle growing on my screen.

We could've gone back, of course, the way we came, but it was a long and brutal hill we'd climbed, and we'd been on the road for almost three hours. Going back would guarantee that we would in no way even approach being on time to pick up G&N. I voted to go forward, and MS pointed out that the sun doesn't lie. Even if the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field had switched while we were out in the wilderness, that didn't change the location of home vis á vis our location—and since it was early afternoon and sunny, we could easily judge which direction we needed to go.

Hence the long, perilous descent down to what I now believe to be Boulder Creek, along a trail that may have been a game trail, and may have only been my mind's desperate creation of a game trail. It was not in any way a trail meant for human heads seven feet off the ground. Frankly, I'm amazed and not a little disappointed that my face isn't lacerated almost beyond recognition—that's certainly what I felt was happening. Once, a stiff young deciduous bush slashed me hard enough across the neck that I feared decapitation. At another point, MS actually got forced off her horse by a particularly acute combination of cliffside and pugilist branch, and only her skill in yoga allowed her to release her foot, caught perilously in the stirrup. That was really the only crisis point of our trip, however uncomfortable the bushwacking, because there was enough room for Snickers to drag MS if she had so wished, and instead of only bouncing along the ground and possibly getting a hoof in the face, MS just might have gotten her neck broken.

When we reached the creek—quite the tossing, splashing cataract at this time of year—MS suggested we follow it downstream, as that is what you do when you reach running water, because it comes out somewhere, and maybe we'll run into a town along the way, and so Shadow and I (occasionally following the lead of Dusty, who is familiar with these parts) forged a trail.

It is definitely at times like these that Shadow truly comes into her own—she knew where we were, she knew where we wanted to be, and she knew how to get there. She's rock-solid calm in the woods, allows me to help her check for the best routes around trees and bushes, but hesitates not at all to push through things and, before we knew it, we were on a clear, grassy Forest Service road, giddy and excited and joking about how much it would've sucked for me if MS had been killed by her horse.

Anyway, soon after reaching the Open Road, we arrived at a clearcut that I knew I knew, and then soon after that we were back on the Potlatch Road, and soon after that we were retracing our steps with a joyous gallop up the hill and over the trail K&A put in several years ago, the shortcut back to their house. We got everyone put away, briefly exercised, by swimming then in the pond, the two elderly labs who'd stayed at home, and made our way to Moscow in a fashion that allowed G&N just enough time to buy some groceries before we brought them back up here and served them a delicious homecoming dinner of putanesca. And wine.

 

Epilogue

Last night around 8pm, just before dinner, I went out into the pasture to bring the horses back in to their pens for the night. Usually they hang around down below in the evening, but this particular evening they were nowhere in sight. To collect them easily before our big ride earlier that day, I had left them in their pens, each with a flake of hay. The mares had worked hard for several hours after that, and Sikem had probably spent the hours in his pen bored and annoyed out of his mind (if one horse is left behind he or she is left in a pen), and so they had decided they were going to stay out. I began hiking up the hill to get them (about a 1-mile round trip) as a squall came over the hills just to the west of the farm, and suddenly I was out in a t-shirt, jeans, and my felt clogs, in a sleety, windy, hail-filled downpour. It was exhilarating, that's for sure, but completely fruitless as far as bringing in the horses. They ripped and snorted and galloped away, and I gave up and came home, assuming they would come and get their grain if they wanted it. And today, the weather has continued erratic—sunny one moment, hail the next, in five to ten minute intervals. No problem, Weather—we're happy to take it easy today.

Saw My Chance and Lassoed It

G&N have these two horses, Strider and Palantir, who are young (maybe four and five), and have been trained, but haven't been ridden much, if at all, in the last couple years. I've had a secret hankering to try and ride these horses ever since they came to the neighborhood, in part because they remind me of my three-year-old quarter horse, Snappy, from my childhood, who was trained, and ridden, but still pretty young and exuberant (shall we say). And in part, I admit, because people who know better think they're probably unsafely wild and unpredictable at this point.

K&A don't ride these horses, they have three of their own of course; and G&N have an inhuman amount of work to do just to survive on their mountaintop, and so they don't really have time to ride them.

But they've been sitting there in the muddy front corner pasture, whinnying at the other horses and desperate to relieve their boredom with breakfast hay and dinner hay, and today I decided I would do it: I would ride one of them. I admit I poked around in G&N's shed to find the bridles, and I brought both down with me after letting the dogs out for the day.

I chose Palantir because he's slightly smaller and just has a friendlier demeanor—I've always felt that he likes me—caught him pretty easily with a carrot and the promise of something different, haltered him and led him out. He stood quite patiently tied to the fence outside on a long enough rope that he could graze; he let me curry and brush him, and he let me pick one hoof, then that was enough of that.

I took him up to the Garage Mahal to bridle, thinking that he'd better be standing over gravel if I was going to keep his attention, and decided there that I'd just put the bridle over the halter and not ever let him completely free, lest he skip away and I never catch him again. I was calm, he was wary, but after a dozen or so tries I got the bit in his mouth and the headstall over his ears, and we were good to go. I removed the halter lead rope from under the bridle, led him by the reins down to where I'd left my helmet and put it on, then stood him on the side of the driveway where I had a couple inches extra height to jump up to his back.

I leaned on him first, put some pressure on him, draped my arms over him, then jumped on. He was perfectly calm, and allowed me to ride him around the yard for the next ten minutes or so—just what I wanted!

He was, understandably, eager to eat any grass he saw under his feet, so we kept mainly to the drive up the hill and the gravel in the yard, but he was responsive, didn't try to run away with me, and quite happily snuffled in my hair and neck after I called it a day and put him away (after, of course, ten minutes of just grazing on the new grass in the yard, at the end of a lead rope, no more pressure to behave).

AWESOME.

That’s a Relief

Yesterday evening I was in the process of putting the horses into their pens for the night, after a long, glorious ride on Shadow, when a (spotless) white mini-SUV pulled over to the side of the Jerome Creek road at the head of the driveway a couple hundred yards away, and a woman's voice started cooing loudly at Palantir, who had gone rushing up to the fence.

"Oh what a sweet thing you are! Ooo, you are so cute and so wonderful! What a sweetie! What a cute thing!" and piercingly on in the still evening air.

Palantir was not being friendly; he was there demanding his dinner, which is usually delivered about that time in a small white (filthy) truck. I assumed the people in the car must be friends of K&A, or maybe even G&N since it was G&N's horse the woman was being so forward with; besides, I was in the middle of the somewhat delicate process of getting Sikem, without a halter, into his pen, and not Snickers's, where he would eat all her grain (just a nibble for each to entice them to do as I wished), and then getting Snickers into her pen without Sikem leaving his, and so on and so forth. The three horses are actually very well-behaved, and usually do exactly what I want them to do, although not ever without letting me know that they are much bigger and faster than me and are merely humoring me because they feel a bit sorry for me, slow, doltish two-legged beast that I am.

Shadow is the most flagrant about this. Yesterday before our ride, for example, the horses had been grazing about ½ mile away or more, up a steep hill at least a 10-minute panting, sweaty walk from the house. They do not come when called.

I had a small amount of grain in a metal can, and they know the sound. Often what I do is walk hike, panting, up to them, halter the one I want, use the lead rope to make rudimentary reins, jump on, and ride bareback back down to the yard. Shadow, however was having none of this. As soon as I was within about 30 feet of her, she lifted her head from her grazing, rallied Snickers and Sikem with a toss of her mane, and they all galloped down the hill and away. Yes . . . right where I wanted them to be . . . but definitely on their own terms. I trudged back down, still carrying the halter and the grain. I took the precaution of closing the gate to the upper pasture as I went through, just in case they attempted to run by me again, but Shadow was relatively easy to catch after this. I made the lead-rope reins anyway and rode her back over to the gate, opened it again for the other horses, and then we went on our way up to the Garage Mahal to tack up. All in all, preparation for a ride can take as long as the ride itself.

At any rate, Ian had come out of the house with Spackle and Tessa, who joined Sadie, Hoover and Dusty who had been with me, all five dogs barking their various barks at the unknown vehicle, and he went down and crossed the creek to see what they wanted.

"Hi!" said the woman brightly. "Can we talk to you for a little bit about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?" she asked, leaning out of the passenger window. "We're missionaries based in Potlatch."

"Well," said Ian, "We don't actually live here—a minister lives here, in fact, and we're just housesitting, and unfortunately I don't have time to talk right now—we have to get the animals in. Maybe you could come back another time," he suggested. "I'm sure the owners would be happy to have a discussion with you. (Sorry, K.) I'd take one of your cards, though," Ian finished, ever the polite one.

They handed over a card and asked permission to turn around in our yard, which Ian granted, assuming he'd put them off from any more proselytizing for the day. As they turned around in the yard, though, as soon as they reached hailing distance of me, just finishing latching gates, the woman leaned out her window again and called to me just as cheerfully as she had to Ian. "Can I interest you in any information about the Morman Church?" she asked brightly.

"No thank you, not at this time," I replied politely.

"Well, whenever you're ready, we're everywhere!" she exclaimed, exuding joy.

PHEW.

Cartography Again

My fancy new Android phone comes with a GPS, and so we've recorded most of our walks and rides over the last couple days, and I intend to keep up the practice even after Ian leaves, tomorrow night. Sigh. I can't believe he has to go. Stupid work trip to Florida, of all places.

Check out my map, and look back every day or so to see what I've added!

By the way, JCR means "Jerome Creek Ride", and JCW means, not surprisingly, "Jerome Creek Walk."

At the Circus

So far this trip to Idaho (we arrived Saturday evening around 6pm) has been just as beautiful as previous trips, but it's definitely been wetter (the ground, fortunately, not the air, so if you wear rubber boots for walking around and don't gallop too much in the sopping trails you're okay), and the animal care has been bumped up yet another notch from what I'm used to in the city. Everybody and their son is in Greece right now, on a ship sailing around the Dodecanese. By that I mean K&A, and their son Dr Jason and his wife and two teenagers, and my mom and Marsh, and G&N, who live up the Jerome Creek Road and would normally be my backup plan here at the Idaho ranch were anything to go wrong, but who have, instead, left me with 11 more animals to keep alive.

Several years ago, Mom and Marsh took a boat trip in France with K&A and four other of their friends; at that time, I had Mom's dog Loper with me as well as K&A's animals, but Loper's about 14 now and, while still full of life force and happy to be around, is deaf, walks like a self-animated puppet—i.e. as if his various parts are attached only by loosely-tied bits of string—and he's got a non-painful growth in his throat that makes his bark sound very like the cough of an old lady who had gotten her main sustenance for the past 3 decades from cigarettes and dry martinis, two olives.

Anyway, Loper is at home, being cared for by M&M's neighbors through the woods, who dote on him and give him treats as flagrantly as my mother does.

Nevertheless, I do have, with the 11 from G&N, 19 animals to take care of here, 21 if you count Ian and me, and we (well, at least me), as you know from reading I Thought I Was Done With This, need a lot.

The day begins between 7 and 7:30 with Ian jumping out of bed to feed our four dogs, while I take slightly more time to throw on my first outfit of the day: fleece pants, yesterday's shirt, a sweater and a knit cap. It's chilly here in the mornings. I then put on my rubber boots and let our three horses out of their pens and into their pasture for a day of grazing. This is the earliest in the season I've been here to take care of things, and it took me a bit of time to realize that the grass wasn't grazed down already; it hadn't begun to grow yet. In the last couple days, I've seen more and more green shoots coming up above last year's harsh yellow stalks.

I come back in and have a small latte, then jump in the old Nissan pickup to take care of G&N's animals. Their horses, who are young and somewhat wild, are down here for ease of care, in a small pen on the creek which is currently a churned up mud pit without graze of any sort. Every couple days I pull a 150 lb bale of hay into the back of the pickup and, morning and evening as I'm heading up to G&N's place to take care of the rest of their menagerie, I stop by and toss four flakes of hay over the fence. Strider and Palantir whinny and cavort and kick up mud on their way to the meal.

Up at G&N's, which is a true modern-day pioneer place at the top of a mountain at the end of a long road (i.e. off the grid), there are five young chickens still growing in a box with a heat lamp, until they're fully fledged, so they're mostly very easy to deal with (must take them out of their big box and clean it every 5 days or so but otherwise I just check to make sure they still have feed and water). There are evidently two cats; I haven't seen them, but the litter box gets filled quite extravagantly overnight, and at least once a day they clean out their food bowls; and there are two dogs, Dusty and Kalluk. I let them out in the morning and feed them, and put them in at night and feed them again. They're supposed to stay up at their place, but Dusty, the female, is more sociable and appears down here every morning about 30 minutes after I've driven away. I can hardly blame her. G&N, who haven't had a vacation in years and years, have been gone since the end of April. In the evenings, Ian and I load the back of the little pickup full of dogs (K&A's dog Sadie refuses to ride in the back with the other dogs; she sits behind the seats in the cab), and even homebody Kalluk gets some playtime before everything is battened down for the night.

We take a walk with all dogs in the late mornings as Ian's long lunch; on Sunday Ian and I rode together in the afternoon but since he's actually working from here this week, I ride alone in the afternoons now.

Yes, I wear my helmet.

Chickens. They really do race around and cluck frantically when you try to pick them up.

The home of the pioneers, and six dogs.

Farm Work.

Farm Fun!

Three labs in a truck.

Early Spring.

Quite Enough of a Good Thing

Hi readers—I began this post back in Japan (in fact, early in Japan), and I am back home now, sitting by the fireplace in the living room at 3:30am, wide awake and starving, because my body seems to think it's 7:30 at night, and where is my fish for the evening??? I'm not allowed to eat anything, however, because I have to go to the hospital at 6:00am to begin proceedings for my Gamma Knife event later today. More on that sometime soon over on I Thought I Was Done With This.

 

Ian and I and J, Ian's work partner and, slightly, boss on this expedition, were met on arrival at Narita airport by Y, one of the people who would be taking the course. This was quite a relief, as all I could see in my jet-lagged state (it's not just the hours of time difference [7; now 8 because of Daylight Savings back home]; it's definitely the hours in the air as well [10]), were Japanese symbols and black-haired people, and that gave me really no clue as to how we were supposed to get to our hotel, which I hadn't paid any attention to, and which Ian remembered wrong. Anyway, we were whizzed through crowds and down hallways and between other travelers. Ian and J were each handed a large envelope of cash—their travel per diems, and food per diems (that saved us the hassle of immediately having to locate an ATM that would work with American banks—many don't)—and then we stopped briefly and bought tickets.

We found ourselves in reserved seats on a train to Yokohama central, switched to a different train and went one stop further to Sakuragicho station, were ushered through the purchasing of Suica cards so we didn't have to buy individual train tickets anymore, and then led out of the station, up an outside escalator, past a Starbucks and into our hotel. We were met by K, a colleague of Y's, who was also staying in the hotel (they both work in labs in other parts of Japan), and the two invited us to dinner. They treated all three of us to dinner that night, and indeed we were treated to dinner the next night as well, and the next night as well. The four-pack of Theo chocolates and the colorful fish-themed magnet that we'd brought for each Y and K started to seem embarrassingly small. We'd been warned about the lavish hospitality of the Japanese, but had way underestimated it.

I will say this: the second two dinners were attended by most of the students in the course, and so 11 people dividing the cost of feeding 14 wasn't quite so bad, but still. We were quite relieved when we were finally allowed to start paying for some of our own sustenance.

The trip up to Kushiro in Hokkaido was equally well-managed, with one exception. Although the train did run from Yokohama to Haneda, the main domestic airport, an airport bus was deemed quicker. We were herded onto the train for one stop from Sakuragicho back to Yokohama Central, then ushered at a fast clip through the station and out a back door where we got into a snaking line. A bus pulled up and the line started moving—not terribly fast, but no hesitation, ever, to allow you to catch your breath. In moments our bags had been taken from us and stowed under the bus and we'd boarded, scanning our Suica cards on the way. Our guides had headed straight for the back, and Ian, who could see farther than me, paused to look around, to see if maybe there were seats together that he'd missed. "No, no, there are two across the aisle from each other back there; go, go!" I hustled him along, caught up in the rush.

We took the two seats, a couple people came back and took the last two just behind us, and people kept coming back. They didn't stand, however: when the last permanent seat was taken, the person grabbed a folded seat from the side of one of the seatbacks and unfolded it into the aisle. He sat down. The next person unfolded the next seat and sat. Then a woman next to us. Flap-flap-flap-flap-flap the rest of the aisle filled up and we were on our way.

When we arrived at the airport, 45 minutes before our flight was due to take off, Y & K headed immediately for baggage check. Here is where their incredibly efficient system broke down.

I had an itinerary from Orbitz, but I did not have a ticket or a seat assignment. When we followed them to baggage check, we were turned away. At least, I was, and Ian, being the gentle and responsible spouse that he is, came with me. We got into a line of people waiting for Ticketing instead, K, joining us to make sure the language barrier didn't slow things down, because at this point we had about 30 minutes before our flight was due to take off. K assured us that going to the gate 15 minutes before was sufficient, and I chose not to worry about it. It wasn't my fault that no one had checked to make sure all the cogs were well-oiled and ready to roll.

Anyway, I was very glad to arrive in Hokkaido where it seemed that things didn't need to be quite so efficient.

 

And now I am going to head to bed, in the hopes that I'll be able to sleep for an hour and a half, and ignore this aching maw of a belly.

The Trouble With Tempura

The hotels where we've been staying serve a buffet breakfast, a combination of Japanese breakfast foods and Western breakfast foods. The Japanese options are the same as for all the other meals—a large bowl of beautiful, glistening, translucent salmon eggs, various unidentifiable pickles, various fishes, and miso soup. The Western options include scrambled eggs, some sort of salty meat and some sort of potato (in La Vista, where we are right now in Kushiro, they're mini hot dogs and tater tots and fries), and a nominal amount of cornflakes. In La Vista, there has also been a big plate of onion rings. Not really being an onion-ring-for-breakfast gal, I had avoided them up until this morning, when I thought "why not add one to my miso and hot dogs?" Here is the ensuing conversation:

Ian: "How's that onion ring?"

Me: "It's squid. I'm ready to go home."

When In Rome . . .

I'm perched in my window on the 9^th floor of the lovely La Vista Spa Resort Hotel in Kushira, Hokkaido. We were told it might be colder on Hokkaido and, indeed, it is. The snow that dampened and entertained us in Yokohama fell here in shovelsful—maybe a foot and a half—and so it's like we've gone back in time to winter. The only dirty cars we've seen yet in Japan have been here; even the only dirty streets. Walking around in Tokyo last night felt like walking around a soundstage. I was thinking Tokyo Disney at first, but there's no way they could keep that density of family revelers as clean as those regular city streets. Nevertheless, the snow is pretty pristine white, possibly because this is a booming metropolis of a mere 200,000 people, so only about 1/77^th the size of the greater Tokyo-Yokohama area. And we drove through acres of pristine forest, with nary a visitor around. And bears live here—evidently lots of them. You have to be just as careful camping in the summers, and hiking around in the fall when they're preparing for the long sleeps, and in the spring when they are RAVENOUS, as you do in the Olympics and other parts of the northwest.

Anyway, while I appreciate the insane attention to detail that allows Tokyo to run as effortlessly smoothly as it does, I'm happy to be in an environment where the less-refined character of my cog isn't an imposition on the Greater Order. There's not a lot of space in the Tokyo system for the imperfection that appeases Allah. They'd better watch it.

Anyway, this is actually going to be a post about food. A favorite phrase of Mom's when we were kids was "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This saved our necks on more than one occasion during our first visit to Italy when I was 12 or 13, and we found that the only safe way to get from one side to the other of careening motocross racers barreling around the roundabouts (why slow down? There are no corners!), was to cling bodily to a Roman, preferably a Roman nun, and take every step exactly as she took hers. Mom was mostly referring to food, though, and mostly not Roman food, because who has trouble with tomato-y, garlicky and oregano-y Italian?

Japan, however, has the potential to be difficult. I used to assume myself to be an adventuresome eater; that is really not the case. I haven't yet learned to embrace my chickenshittedness however, with all the love and acceptance that I believe it yearns for, and so I am glad that I can legitimately claim to be allergic to at least one shellfish—crab—and therefore bring all other shellfish along for the ride, even, in a pinch, bivalves or the suckery part of cephalopods. This saves me from things like shrimp and all its relatives, both large and small (although the teeny ones the Thais put in Pad Thai I manage to swallow down with the delicious, delicious everything else the Thais put in it), and any squidgy things that I can't bring myself to put in my mouth (Ian's and my bargain for Japan was that he would eat all the squidgy things while I would sing all the Karaoke. So far, only his side of the bargain has had to be held up.).

Even that moderately substantial category, however, has protected me hardly at all from an enthusiastic introduction to many, many new things.

Actually, this has been fantastic. For our first three nights in Yokohama, we were taken to dinner by groups of people. The very first night, exhausted and dazzled and bemused by 10 hours of flying time and the utter foreignness of the place we found ourselves, we were glad to find that we were eating at one of the restaurants at our hotel. It was one of those tables set close to the floor so you take off your shoes, but thankfully one that was actually set in a well in the floor so your legs didn't take leave of you in crossed numbness by the end of the evening. We ate some skewers of meaty things, some daikon pickle, some beer, some sake that was poured from a large bottle into a little pitcher until the pitcher overflowed, filling the first cup which was perfectly placed under the spout. Very theatrical. There were bits of sashimi—including horse sashimi which is, yes, raw horse—pickled quail eggs, some tempura vegetables, maybe salad, some fatty bits of smoked pork belly . . . maybe only the horse that I patted myself on the back for trying.

The next night was a festal meal, though—several of the people who had been attending the course also came to dinner bringing us to 13 in number—and the beer flowed, the sake flowed, and boy oh boy did the fish flow. I will say this: having a meal with 13 people is the way to do it in Japan. We must have had almost 20 different things served to us over the course of 2 or 3 hours, and it was all interesting, and much of it I liked a lot, and only some of it was hard to keep down, and I think there were only two things I didn't try, over legitimate concern for my health. One might imagine that one of those things would've been the chicken sashimi—yes, I just wrote that—but no, the chicken sashimi I ate.

I will say this—all the writing about food is making me hungry—and making me realize that, before I go on, I'll simply have to switch formats. Check back in a day or so for the link to a picasa site devoted to our Japanese meals. Expect detailed captions.

Bathroom Instructions and Admonishments

It IS good for drinking.

I know this looks like a towel rack, but it's not.

Caution: this is not a Third World Country.

There must be some warning we can make about the shampoo . . . (and they were successful)

Yes, but does it flush?

Careful now, a baby can drown in two inches of water. And a turkey can drown in a rainstorm!

The Opposite Vacation from the Last One

Yokohama, a city of over 3 million inhabitants (that is, 7 times as many people as live in the country of Cabo Verde as a whole), is cold (it snowed Tuesday night), flat, full of skyscrapers and electronic heated toilet seats (a very surprising discovery in a random subway station loo) with buttons for washing there if you so wish, has malls and amusement parks on every corner and a 24-hour convenience store (Family Mart) in the hotel lobby, endless channels of TV, a ridiculously extravagant consumer culture (judging from the mall I wandered in for a bit yesterday morning when it was still raining), and is part of possibly the vastest, most elaborate train and subway network in the world. A few years ago Ian and I were driving around Scotland, and when we approached Aberdeen near the end of our trip, Ian, who was navigating, described the knot of roads around the city center as a "spaghetti of lines." Talk about a spaghetti of lines. And the fish is served raw.

I'm enjoying wandering around here, getting the traditional Anglophone's chuckle over some of the names: Pocari Sweat for an energy drink; Booze Café for the restaurant at one of the amusement parks. My first, travel-weary impression of the place, rushing through a crowded train station in the early evening on Monday, was monochromatic, or maybe slightly dichromatic—a population of fair-skinned people with brown eyes and black hair, 95% of whom seem to wear all black to work. Looking out the 22^nd story hotel room window in the morning, I'm struck by the sameness of all the hurrying forms, coming and going from the train station at the base of our home. Up close, color announces itself better—some puffy coats are beige or dark green, or even occasionally red or orange. And everyone carries an umbrella, and when those are up, the palette changes considerably.

It's obvious that efficiency is highly valued here—everything works like regularly oiled clockwork, things and people alike. Fans are quiet, the bathroom water is hot almost instantly here on the 22^nd floor, or cold almost instantly if you want to drink it. "GOOD FOR DRINKING" says the sign above the sink, so you don't need to ask if it's okay. And it is good for drinking. All the lights in the room have switches between the two twin beds—and all the lights work. People move through the subways at the same fast clip, not even slowing to enter or leave the ticket gates, their Suica subway passes in hand by the time they arrive. To keep the flow of humanity moving, the gates stand open, and only close if you don't have enough money left on your pass to pay the fare. If this is the case, there is a "Fare Adjustment" machine in the wall just next to the exit. People are polite and they wait in line, and wait for the walk symbol when crossing the street—there is no unnecessary rush—but everyone moves with purpose, always, keeping time-wasting to a minimum. The "door close" button is used every time we ride the elevator.

We are cautioned or apologized to about many things in our hotel room: "NEVER HANG TOWELS OR CLOTHES ON LIGHTING EQUIPMENT. DOING SO COULD CAUSE FIRE," or "Please refrain from smoking in bed." I had left an inch of water in our bedroom hot pot yesterday morning, and when the room was cleaned, a notice was left:

    "Dear Guest.

We trust you are having a comfortable stay with us, however we would like to deeply apologize for hotel regulations that require us not to handle any cups, glasses and a pot with liquid inside. This is in case if there is a contact lense or its chemical inside the riquid. if there is any questions.

    Please contact the front desk, and we will deliver new glasses and cups.

    Thank you for your co-oporation.

                        HOUSE KEEPING"

This care, and yet, the hot pot is heated to boiling on a hot plate built into the desk next to the television. And because of the great technology involved, every toilet has an electrical outlet right next to it. Not the habit of plumbing/electrical wiring that we are in back home.

At any rate, I'm having an awesome, if bemusing, time wandering around and just drinking in the foreignness of it. I walked through town yesterday afternoon for a couple hours, searching for a shrine that I'd seen on a map. There are location maps posted regularly throughout the area, so I could check where I was from time to time. The maps aren't oriented N/S, though, but rather in the direction you are facing, which takes some getting used to. Also, we're on the eastern side of this island and so the water is to the east, not the west, and I've had to flip my mental map. I eventually found the shrine, and it was beautiful and strange and not at all what one would expect five minutes' walk from the tallest building in Japan, but it took me the better part of an hour and half. I mean, I couldn't even tell where to look for a street sign, let alone how to read it. Anyway, by the time I got back to the hotel, I WAS STARVING TO DEATH. Dizzy with hunger from the sheer density of stimulation.

And now I get to go and do it all again!

Link to Pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/nilact

That should get you to all the recent trip photos.

Next up: Japan!

A Quick Reckoning Before We Leave for the Fifth Continent in Six Months

In no particular order:

10 flights in 3 weeks is a lot of time in the air, and almost as much time in airports. They took my picture on the way to Guernsey (which is not legally a full-on part of the UK although they accept the Pound Sterling . . . and give you change in Guernsey pounds which are only accepted in—you guessed it—Guernsey [or banks—thanks A&F for being my last-minute bank]). Also on the way to Guernsey, I sat next to a hot young kid who, it turns out, was a rugby player coming in to help the Guernsey team in some game the next night—his name was in the Guernsey paper we all received when we sat down. I later saw him stuffing the paper into his duffle bag, a slightly embarrassed grin on his face.

The last day in Cabo Verde we wandered around the Sucupira Market, which is quite pleasingly Third World with its warren of stalls and vendors selling cheap and/or used clothes, shoes and flip flops, African cloth, tools and housewares and personal care supplies, and also services—a tailor, a cobbler, hairdressers. Somewhere in the middle I stepped on a little round-headed thumbtack, which came right into the bottom of my Keens sandals and poked, only enough to be annoying but not enough to break the skin, whenever I took a step. We left the market and sat down in the shade on a curb somewhere and tried to pry it out. A young Cabo Verdean came by and peeked at what we were doing; when he saw the tack, he jumped to concerned action, grabbing my sandal and loping off to a guy in a shop who had a key or something that wedged out the tack. I am embarrassed to admit that I was momentarily worried when he ran off with my shoe that he would keep it and I would have only one shoe . . . but then I realized that he, too, would have only one shoe, and a nasty, dirty, slimy, smelly, much-hiked-in one at that. In fact, I was lucky he didn't pass out from the sheer disgustingness before he was able to get it back to me, repaired and again very comfortable.

The one night we had in Lisbon happened to be a Saturday, and we had dinner at a small restaurant in the Alfama (one of the neighborhoods, charming, cobbled streets, I'd never actually been to this part of town before), at a restaurant where they happened to have live Fado, which is a uniquely Portuguese variety of music with guitar and singers, evoking soulful wistfulness and longing. The owner of the restaurant was a mostly jolly man who argued a lot with his wife, who seemed to be the one chef as he was the one server, but treated his patrons with friendly congeniality. At one point he went racing outside; a couple minutes later he came back with fresh rolls—so fresh that the one he threw at me on his way back to the kitchen ("no charge!") seared my fingers. I juggled it back and forth and pulled off hunks—the crisp crust and the moist, pillowy insides were the BEST. BREAD. EVER.

My hotel room in the Lincoln House Hotel in London: An awesome feat of engineering. The room was about 8 feet wide and maybe 12 feet long and included a double bed with fancy pillows, a desk, a coffee/tea/hot cocoa station with an electric kettle, a giant wardrobe, a sink, a miniature toilet-shower pod which appeared to be a boat bathroom cased in with wallboard, and a teeny fridge the size of a six-pack cooler. The bed was built purposely high so that you could store your luggage underneath. Very efficient. And only about $140 for a night.

Reading Winnie the Witch with six-year-old B: "Let's read Winnie," she says. "There are six stories in this book," I say. "Which one do you want?" "ALL of them!" says B, and that's what we read.

Sharing my Tarot cards (with parental support) with nine-year-old C, B's older sister. She may be a psychic in the making!

Hanging out at my home away from home in Portugal, with B and C and their parents, and cooking Gordon Ramsey's chocolate fondant cakes. YUM.

Hanging out in Tunbridge Wells with other old friends and their two boys—almost two and just three weeks—both of whom I got to meet for the first time. And such tasty home-cooked meals! And the bathroom at my B&B . . . which was large and comfortable and had a tub and a shower and a wall-length radiator-towel bar that I hung all my clothes on before I put them on in the morning (it was COLD in England, snowing almost every day I was there), but, strangely, not a single electrical outlet. The house wasn't that old, and there were lights in the bathroom—well, one light, connected to a loud, loud fan that didn't go off for 15 minutes after you turned off the light so I only turned on the light once the whole time I stayed there—but no outlets. Very strange.

Aside from in Cabo Verde, where I didn't check, free WiFi everywhere we stayed. It was all secured, though—in fact, all the WiFi my computer picked up on anywhere was secured. This was a BIG change from our 2007 trip, where pretty much nowhere had secured their wireless.

And, every stranger I encountered, anywhere, for any reason: friendly, talkative, nice. I don't remember people being outright rude to us in 2007 when we spent four months traveling in Europe, near the tail end of Bush's presidency, but now they are nice. Obama may not be the magician people were hoping for, but the fact of him is a huge boon to the image of Americans outside our country.