Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #3

Continued from before

Steven and Margie thought for many years that I was lost. Sometimes I was but not in the way they feared. I was simply less settled than they were, less comfortable with consistency and predictability. I had always admired their respective even keels, but I also thought they should tip to port every now and then.

Peggy, my first wife, told me I never settled down even when I did. We got married young and got divorced when we weren’t much older, and though we were mostly poor and somewhat itinerant during our time together, I’ve never been able to say that we weren’t happy. I still dream of her, and the dreams are a mixture of fact and, well, dream.

Heat (mostly a dream)

“Christ, it’s hot,” Peggy says in a voice that is smooth and soft. She’s lying on her back beside me, and we’re both naked on the queen-sized bed; a damp white towel is stretched across her narrow hips. Her brown hair moves a bit in the tiny currents of warm air that the small fan moves through our apartment bedroom. There is no breeze outside—leaves on the tall, aging eucalyptus trees outside our window do not move at all. We are barely into June, and it has been hot like this for nearly two weeks. Central California’s summer has started early and threatens to be long.

“It’ll get cooler,” I tell her as I listen to the monotonous hum of the fan. “The weatherman I listened to this morning says that temperatures could drop by as much as fifteen degrees by tomorrow night.”

“That doesn’t help much today, does it?” Her voice is hardly above a whisper. She talks like that—cynical but quiet—when she’s tired of something.

“I suppose not,” I say, “but at least there’s some hope.”

“We have to get a bigger fan.” She looks at me sternly, talking a bit louder as if I were defying her or something. ”That one is worthless.”

“How can we manage that? We can barely afford gas for the truck, and you want a bigger fan? It doesn’t stay this hot for very long. Maybe only a few more days, then it will get better.” I want to tell her that I am not the cause of the heat, that I cannot be blamed.

I turn the pillow over, feeling for a cool spot with the side of my unshaven face. The linen sheet has been covering my feet, and I kick it off the bed. Air pushed by the fan works its way up from my ankles and across my heavy thighs, then to my chest; there it seems to stop.

“We shouldn’t make love on days when it’s this hot,” Peggy tells me, her eyes blinking quickly, her voice back to its near-whisper. “I work up too much of a sweat and it takes me hours to cool down again.” She traces my forearm lightly with long fingernails that she painted a light blue just this morning.

I find myself listening to the late afternoon traffic on the street running in front of our apartment building. Occasional diesels pass, working through their gears far down the street where the hill starts. The trucks strain by our apartment. For a moment the noise and the heat and the oddly sweet smell of diesel fumes combine, and I tense and hold my breath in an effort to shut them all out, to forget about the jobs we’ve lost and the compression I feel in this small apartment.

“Sears might have fans on sale this weekend,” I finally say. “We could charge it, I guess. And it isn’t as if we’d be buying a luxury, or anything. It would be something we really do need.” In Nevada, life was not just heat like this but the desolation of towns like Fallon and Winnemucca and Battle Mountain—outposts in the endless Nevada desert. And it was bad water pumps on the truck and Peggy’s pneumonia and always that slight imbalance of bad luck over good choices. Peggy made change for gamblers in a dozen casinos, and I emptied ashtrays and swept floors in nearly as many. Then the small casinos laid people off, and the large ones didn’t hire. For the five weeks we were In Winnemucca, nearly every day was full of dust and wind. My eyes dried out so much I couldn’t see well enough to drive at night.

“You said yourself we couldn’t afford a new fan,” Peggy says to the ceiling as much as to me. “And you’re probably right. If we can’t afford it, we shouldn’t use the charge card.” She has rested her fingers on the soft flesh above my elbow, pressing down just enough so I can feel my pulse against her touch.

“But we should do something. Maybe we can find one cheap at a garage sale.”

“And add to our wonderful collection of household goods,” she says wearily, her eyes closed now. She presses her full lips together tightly when she stops talking.

Nearly everything we have owned—and sometimes sold—seems to have come from a garage sale or a flea market: the bed we sleep on, the Hotpoint refrigerator, the small black-and-white TV. I think it must be hard on Peggy, having to live with used furniture. But I’m not rich and we’ve both learned to make do for most of our lives. It is the pattern our parents and grandparents followed, and I’ve often wondered how a person goes about getting blessed with wealth.

“Remember Illinois?” Peggy asks loudly, catching me by surprise. Her eyes dance beneath her eyelids like they do when she dreams at night, as though she’s watching something moving back and forth across some invisible landscape. “Remember how much we hated the cold winters? All that snow. God, what I’d give to be back there now up to my neck in a snowdrift. So cold. I don’t think I’d even wear a coat.” She runs her hands up her chest to her neck and throat, then rests them just beneath her earlobes.

“We could move back,” I tell her instinctively, seeing that she is happy with the thought. I move my arm closer to her, so the back of my hand is against the curve of her thinning waist. “If I could find a job. Maybe you could find something, too. I don’t know….” We grew up in northern Illinois, but it was thirty years of those dismal winters that drove west in the first place. We’d both thought that dealing blackjack would be a good way to earn a living, even if we had to work nights or in a small town for awhile.

But now we’re in this place, far from the peaceful suburbs we think we’d like, and I don’t know if I want to pack up and move everything back the two-thousand miles after just starting to learn about California. The work here is not always wonderful, but it is available. What if we go back and can’t get jobs or find a decent place to live? I’ve had enough of living in the back of a pickup truck like we did for nearly three months after crossing to the west side of the Mississippi and having the truck simply lie dead until we raised enough money for a rebuilt transmission. Any romance or sense of adventure in that sort of thing wears off quite quickly.

“Remember how the ice would cover the entire front porch of that house we rented?” Peggy continues. She traces her hands now across her belly. "And how we used to skate where the schoolyard flooded and froze?” Her fingers dance lightly on her narrow ribs. “I haven’t skated in so many years, and I used to be pretty good.”

“Let’s move, then,” I say. “I really wouldn’t mind. It would be hard until we found jobs, but we could make it, couldn’t we?”

“If we wanted to, we could make it. We could stay with my sister for a week or so until something turns up.” She lays her arms at her sides, so her fingernails are once more on my own arm.

“If it stays this hot much longer, I think we should move,” I tell her. I watch a glistening bead of sweat travel from between her breasts down to just above her navel, where the fringed edge of the towel is. I want to doze in the heat, but I force my eyes open.

“But if it’s not too hot, things aren’t so bad here. Just not Winnemucca or Reno again. Or Battle Mountain. Nothing in Nevada.” She wets the corners of her mouth with the delicate tip of her tongue.

“Maybe it will cool down, and then you’ll feel better. And maybe we can find a way to get a bigger fan. Things usually work out for us if we wait long enough. Things usually turn out okay."

“We’ll wait a week,” she says. “Okay? One more week. Then we’ll see how things are going and decide what we should do.” She tosses the towel to the floor. She brings her knees up toward her chest, then lays them flat again on the mattress, flexing her long, soft legs. My arm is sore where she has rubbed her fingernails harder and kneaded them into my browned skin. “Make love to me,” she says suddenly, her eyes wide open as she cradles my face between her palms. "I don’t care how hot it is. Make love to me again.” She shuts her eyes and grasps the laminated headboard. Her entire body shines with perspiration.

I roll onto my side and kiss her, and she puts her arms around my neck, pulling me closer. I open my eyes and look at the sweat that dots her face and between the hairs on her scalp, where the skin shows through. The fan drones on and on with a hum that seems to have gotten louder, louder than even the parade of diesels groaning by. When the fan turns toward the bed I feel warm air against my back, and I see that Peggy’s hair doesn’t move with the breeze anymore, that I’m blocking it out.

I kiss her harder, and she kisses me back.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #2

Waiting: Grand Junction, CO


For good or bad, we were delayed in Grand Junction. “Something about the computer,” the conductor said. “The engines aren’t communicating with each other. Don’t go far.”

Where would we go? Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet were in no hurry, and though I could no longer see my father’s face through the window of the observation car, I didn’t think he was in a hurry, either. Margie found me leaning against a wall and asked if I wanted one of the apples she had bought. I took it, polished it against my shirt, and took a bite.

“You and Steven must’ve copied that from Dad,” Margie said.

I considered my toothmarks in the apple. “Probably.”

“You staying out here?” The wind had picked up, and Margie pulled her arms to her chest.

“Getting kind of crazy sitting on that train,” I said. “How’s Dad?”

Margie shrugged. “Kind of like you—tired of the train. A couple of candy-ass men.”

Dad had spent thirty-five years as a plumber in suburban Chicago. Steven and I grew up as plumber’s helpers, but neither of us loved the trade in a way to make a living at it, though we were happy enough spending summers in high school taking our father’s money when the jobs were big enough. Steven went straight to college in Boston after graduation, and he has been happy enough in a white-collar world. Margie went on to become some type of brain doctor, and from what she says, she’s been quite successful. I went on to become a little bit of everything—not especially successful, but not especially unhappy, either.

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #1

Drivin’ that Train


Most of us were alive, but Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet were boxed up in the baggage car, as ready to get on with decomposition as their pine coffins were. Those of us in the passenger compartment weren’t sad, for we’d been bringing family home for decades; it was what we did. My father, Uncle Frank’s youngest and only surviving brother, said that their great-grandfather had started the tradition when he brought his father home. Since then, aunts and uncles and grandparents and assorted cousins returned to the family cemetery accompanied by as many relatives as could get a few days off from work. We were never told exactly why this had become so important, but it was one of the few family traditions that everyone seemed comfortable with. Nobody extended much effort for holiday gatherings, but when someone died—and in this case two someones—word spread fast.

Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet had died within a day of each other. They’d both been ill for awhile, Frank’s heart bad for years and Harriet’s lungs more recently so, but they both seemed to have decided that if one couldn’t stay around, the other one shouldn’t. Aunt Harriet must have been at Uncle Frank’s side during his last few hours, but nobody had been by her side. She didn’t even call to tell anyone that Uncle Frank was dead, and we might have gone for days without knowing about either of them if their neighbor who’d mowed their lawn for several years hadn’t checked on them.

Some of us had talked about how things must have happened in the bungalow they’d lived in for half a century, and while we were sad that Harriet died alone, we couldn’t decide on whether she would’ve been sad. My father was 62, Uncle Frank five years older, Aunt Harriet someplace between the two of them.

My father hadn’t said much since we’d left Chicago, just seemed to bide most of his waking hours in the observation car. Going east to west Amtrak always seemed to lose time, even when running across the Great Plains with hardly a hill to climb. My father wondered if this was irony, since time zones were at least partly established to suit the railroad industry. None of us could clearly define irony, though, so we didn’t give it much thought. When the train stopped in Grand Junction, Colorado, we were four hours behind schedule though we never heard why. My father was the only one who stayed on the train while the rest of us hurried into the station to buy some fresh fruit and cold drinks in the small store almost hidden near the bathrooms. Steven, my younger brother, said he thought Dad wasn’t depressed about losing another—his final—sibling as he was at the realization that he was the only one left.

Steven and I, in fact, had long joked about which of us would be the surviving brother. Margie, our older sister, said she gave us odds of 50-50 each. She had also said that the peculiar family tradition was more morbid than not, a drawn-out, perverted version of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Still, Margie was with everyone else buying apples and bananas in the station. When Steven walked off to smoke a cigarette downwind of me, I looked through the windows of the observation car and could see my father looking down at us.

Tales to Tell

As a diversion, there will be some fiction here. If Dickens could serialize his stuff, why can't I? Of course, that he was getting paid must've been nice. And that he was paid by the word must've been even nicer.

The first installment is awaiting a proper photograph to complement the start of things. I have an idea of what that photograph will be, but I haven't gotten it into my camera. Maybe on the morrow I shall get it there and then to here. I'm hopeful that other installments will be written fairly quickly, and during today's bike ride I came up with a couple bits of story line.

The grand work is titled Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch, a line from Madeleine Peyroux's CD Bare Bones, which I've been listening to for awhile.
So, stayed tune. Or don't.

Long, Long Time

So, 2010 has been around for over a month. Happy new year....

Returned recently from another 2-night stay in snowy Yosemite, which was just what the doctor ordered. Not my doctor, of course, but somebody's doctor. I visited one of my doctors a couple weeks ago, and he billed my insurance company $65 for a 10-minute visit. The 40 minutes I spent in the waiting room were free, I guess, just a perk of the modern medical practice. If my doctor had prescribed 2 nights in Yosemite, imagine what he could charge!

Were I a younger, less encumbered man, I believe I would spend a month in Yosemite. At $5 a night for the walk-in Camp 4, rent would be a bargain. A larger tent, a chair, and a stack of books would easily comfort me for 30 days. Free showers at Curry Village would keep me clean enough for my own company, and miles and miles of hiking opportunities would keep me occupied and active. Being the eccentric old man in the tent would be a nice change--at list in description--from being the cranky old man in the cubicle.

In some ways, I suppose, such an experience could be likened to a month in rehab. I could wean myself from computers and telephones, from artificial light, from a plethora of bad habits. After 30 days I could drive home and present myself to family and friends so that they could ooh and ahh at my progress.

Come to think of it, we all should take a month and do something but what we are doing now. We might come out on the other side being outwardly no different, and maybe we wouldn't change much inwardly. Perhaps lessons learned from all those books by, among others, Tarthang Tulku and Shunryu Suzuki are starting to sink in (or maybe find their way out?). Imagine a month in a tent: sleeping on the ground, breathing good air, listening to the ice fall off the rock faces. Not a bad picture, really.

Old Friends

Many years ago I applied for and was given a Master Card. Having it was great fun, and I earned miles on American Airlines whenever I charged something. Citibank and I enjoyed a nice relationship, for the most part, though I never let on that I was also using a Visa card issued by Chase, and with this card I earned miles on United Airlines. I saw no reason for either bank to know of my relationship with the other, though I'm sure each could have (and probably did) learn of my financial peccadillos.

Not long ago, however, Citibank sent me a note saying that the interest rate on my card would soon be over 23%, which is about double what Chase makes me pay. Feeling somewhat hurt, I called Citibank and said I wanted to end our relationship. The woman I spoke with seemed somewhat surprised at first when I told her my reason for calling, but after she put me on hold for a couple of minutes, she returned and quite cheerily asked if I would like an email confirming our breakup. Surprise, now, was mine, for I had expected at least a middling attempt at reconciliation. "Is it us?" I wanted her to ask. But, nothing. We were finished, both resigned to remembering our special times together, those tender moments. I wondered if in her time away from the phone she consulted with her boss, who found that I had charged nearly nothing on the card for many, many months, that I had been spending more time and money with Visa. If the woman had voiced a willingness to change to keep us together, I might have relented. On a slightly related note, in some moments on some days recently I have wished my former employer had made a similar effort to keep me around. Maybe I should learn how to bluff better than I know how.

Perhaps not oddly enough, just a day or so on one side or another of our breakup, Tiger Woods and his own peccadillos hit the news. When I first heard how he and his SUV didn't quite make it away from home unscathed, my first thought was that there aren't many reasons for a married man to dash from his house in those hours between midnight and dawn. I really don't care too much about Tiger Woods, for I haven't worshiped a professional athlete since I was a kid and Billy Williams played for the Chicago Cubs. Maybe Woods is, as some have said, the best athlete of the century, but that certainly doesn't mean he's an especially good (or intelligent) person. Then again, I don't know that he never really claimed to be either good or intelligent--those adjectives were ascribed by others who ascribe those types of things. Woods was once one of the faces of American Express, the snootiest of all credit cards, and I wonder how they ended their relationship.

On the heels of Tiger Woods' rush into gossipy tabloids, I read that the wife of Mark Sanford, the governor of North Carolina, had filed for divorce. Good for her! She's certainly milking the governor's affair for all the publicity she can, but I admired her for not standing beside him as he confessed to all that he had denied, all the lies he had told his family and the citizens of North Carolina. I also read that Sanford, who is a conservative republican, would not be impeached. Being a liar and an adulterer doesn't mean much in the political realm (see Clinton, William). In South Carolina, however, democrat Cecil Bothwell, a city councilman in Asheville, is at risk of being impeached because he is an atheist, which his opponents say is a sin. Now, Bothwell may or may not be a good person, and I certainly don't know if he is either a liar or an adulterer. It seems like he's being hounded because of a pre-existing condition, though, since from what I've discovered in my tentative steps into Christianity, everyone is a sinner. Comes with the territory of being human, I think. Threatened for impeachment simply because he doesn't believe in god? Bizarre. What if he were Muslim--would that spare him?

I also do not especially care what the governor of North Carolina does when he's not hiking the Appalachian Trail, and far be it for me to say that maybe he didn't find love when he wasn't hiking there. Maybe Tiger Woods thought he had found love, as well, though from what I've heard and read, I'm doubtful. I once wrote a novel in which the protagonist thought he had found new love, too, but he was a jerk and wanted to keep both his wife and his girlfriend. His girlfriend's husband, come to think of it, was a professional golfer, and only at the end of the story does that protagonist realize how much of a jerk he is.

Me? I think I'll get over my separation with my Master Card. My Visa treats me well, but I did notice today that the card expires in less than a month. I wonder, Will they send me a new card? Or, do they, too, see my very low balance and lack of activity? Maybe they'll be the ones who want a separation.

From Here to Affinity

Before class I am sitting in a coffee shop. The course, pseudo-literature of the ilk only an educational subsidiary of a for-profit corporation could formulate, contains just 2 students. This is a mistake, and the only reason the course was not canceled is because the original enrollment was half a dozen. I saw 2 of those 6 on the first night, but from our second meeting on only a dynamic duo remains.

I usually make some time before class to go over my notes once more. The notes, however, were developed with the idea that I'd have more students and could actually teach for the requisite 4 hours. The school is serious about not leaving before 10 p.m., and if we sign out early, we are reported to whoever is our boss these days. Just what I need--more marks against me on my permanent record. I figure I'll have to do enough explaining about serious stuff if God and I ever meet, and if He's got an administrator that handles the small things, I may not even get a chance to enter the Corner Office to plead my case.

Both of my students are women, and they are troupers--hardly complaining, acting as though they don't mind being in the room with me when they would rather be home with their respective children. One woman, though, sent me a note before our third meeting saying she was not "feeling good" and did not see herself staying much longer than an hour. I resisted the urge to respond and correct "good" to "well." Odd thing about this woman: I discovered in our second meeting that her boyfriend is someone I've known for quite awhile. We coached our sons' Little League and soccer teams. We have a photograph of the boys when they were in elementary school, and they are holding a sign that reads "Best friends forever."

"I thought he was still married," I said to her, to which she responded, "He hasn't been married for years." This is strange because because his son and mine remain fairly close, and my son is also sociable with my friend's wife's former brother-in-law.

Over the years we have heard rumors and gossip, but we have heard nothing about a divorce. Coyly, I even asked my son about this, and he said he assumes that my friend and his wife are still together. Salient in all this, I think, are the words "not married," which do not necessarily equal "divorced." There is a distinction here, though perhaps not legally. And if God really cares about such civil things, he might not see the distinction, either. Frankly, I don't care much for gossip, and I believe that most aspects of people's lives are none of my business. When I was a kid, I'd heard a rumor that a young fellow down the street from us was a peeping tom. I mentioned to my mother that I had heard this, and she just nodded and continued on as though it was no big deal. Maybe the way she handled that affected me; who knows? Maybe she was, in her own way, trying to protect me from small-town secrets.

The woman never said anything about her boyfriend in our third class, and I did not ask. I assumed that she had told him about my being her teacher, and I wondered what he thought about that. Had he been found out, exposed? Or, did he even care? Whatever he thinks, I hope he is happy, that if it is right for everyone involved, the obvious affinity my student has for my friend is good and genuine. For many of the years I have known him his marriage has been somewhat troubled, though I have no idea how much he contributed to that trouble. I figure my students and I will all show up for our next meeting, and then we'll go our separate ways.

Looking over my notes again, I see there is nothing to be added; there are things only to be removed. I make a few changes, cross out some activities, and turn my attention to Phillip Levine's What Work Is. Somewhere in this book of poems, I know, is a stanza that contains just what I need right now.

Working Man

What I thought about on October 23, 2009

Sometimes a problem with being the main bread-earner is that the bread grows stale. On the cusp of changing jobs, I look at the previous 9.5 years with my current employer and wonder at which point the bread there became less fresh.


What I think today

Whew, doggies!

Starting my third week in a new bakery, I'm wondering if I bit off more than I can chew. If my career is toast.... Okay, enough of that! These weeks have passed quickly, and I'm still trying to work my way through a morass of people, policy, and procedures. And while I have always enjoyed learning something new, I'd forgotten the feeling of being jolted out of a comfortable bed and coming to rest on pins and needles. Every day now is a challenge as I build relationships with new people and acquire different skills. Some fun, really!

Batter Up & Hitting the Wall

Almost in between jobs, my second-oldest son and I get out of town early and head southeast for a 2-night stay in a canvas tent in Yosemite's Curry Village. The only other times I have been to Yosemite Valley were in winter. The first of those trips involved rain; the other 2 trips involved snow. All of the trips involved sleeping inside my own tent in Camp 4, the Valley's walk-in campground frequented by the frugal, the wall-climbers, and those who just want a place to sleep.

Previously reliant on friends who serve as guides, this trip is the first for which I am expected to lead and to know the answers. These are generally not good things, but I step up to the plate and swing the best I can. We find out tent, #559, which looks like this:


My son and I select our respective beds, fit them with the supplied sheets and wool blankets, then head out to find things. Over the next couple of days we will orient ourselves, figure out the Valley's shuttle system, learn some geology, spend time minutes prowling through the Valley at night, get into a brief and silly argument with someone who came too close to running us over in a parking lot, eat overpriced food, and generally play tourist. That night after dinner, we make our way to the visitors' center to watch the hour-long film Return to Balance by "world-renowned climber Ron Kauk," of whom I have no knowledge. We had purchased our tickets earlier that afternoon, and those tickets were, in turn, taken by a man who reminds me of my friend Shawn, someone with climbing experience in his own right. My son and I find seats, and just before the movie starts, the ticket-taker introduces himself as that same Ron Kauk. It's nice to see someone who is "world-renowned" taking tickets at his own movie.

I am too fat and cowardly to climb my way into or out of anything more than a bathtub, and I envy people who have the confidence to work their way up anything other than the corporate ladder. I also enjoy the film and Kauk's question-and-answer period afterward. Someone in the audience asks him if he has a "day job," and Kauk says that he once worked for 3 weeks as a dishwasher, but otherwise has been fortunate enough to not have had a day job. (Over the next couple of days my son and I will articulate how enjoyable life would be if we could call Yosemite our place of business.)

The second day includes a relatively short but, for us, strenuous hike toward Upper Yosemite Falls. Our destination is the Columbia Rock overlook, from where we get a very nice view of distant Half Dome, which looks like this.

Because we got a somewhat late start, we sweat a lot during the hike; my shirt will be soaked by the time we finish. The sign at the bottom of the trail mentions that there are 60 switchbacks to Columbia Rock. I hate switchbacks. I understand their design and efficiency, but I don't have to like them. More tired than I should be, part way into the climb I resort to mentally reciting lyrics to songs I know, trying to match the song's rhythm to my pace. I also think of what I read last night in Kominski's "13: Baseball Supernovellete":

Give me guys with passion for the game. Believers in unbelievable finishes. Go about their business never getting too high or too low. Hearts strong enough to last a whole season. The game gives you three strikes and 27 outs. You do the rest.

I'm not sure why this bounces into my conscious, but I'm glad it does. Somehow and in some way this little excerpt figures into hiking and backpacking: take what you've got, and put one foot in front of the other. Later that night when I reflect on the quote and revisit images of Kauk's movie, I think that Kominski's little quote applies to climbing, too--"Hearts strong enough to last the whole season." In some situations, after all, quitting mid-way through something really isn't a viable option.

In mid-afternoon we stroll leisurely with a Ranger-led walk during which we learn a bit about Yosemite's geology. Strangely, or perhaps just coincidentally, the Ranger covers material similar to what I'd read that morning and the night before in Mary Hill's Geology of the Sierra Nevada. It's a pleasant stroll, but my son and I both are nursing sore legs and stiff backs from that morning's hike. Then, after dinner, we venture out on the aforementioned "prowling," basically a guided tour with about 20 other people. We walk without flashlights, and after our eyes have adjusted, we all grow quite comfortable in light offered mostly by the stars. At one point my son and I can see what must be a climber's flashlight high up on a wall on the other side of the valley.

I slept very little the first night (which gave me time to read), but I sleep well the second. I awake as refreshed as I can be after sleeping in a bed not my own, and after breakfast we pack the car, lock the tent behind us, and head home. On the way out of the Park we stop across from El Capitan and look up. The granite face looks like this:

Looking up at this wall and searching for something that does not belong, I see light reflecting off something shiny. At least one climber, maybe two--too high for me to see clearly, and I lament my decision to leave the binoculars at home. I point to the spot, and I am glad that my son also sees something that does not belong there. We marvel. Later, outside the park and descended into a different valley, we listen to Beethoven's Symphony #9 for part of the journey, and my son takes over the wheel--I know he wants to drive, and I trust him to get us home. I consider the last couple of days and think that I should have taken him and his brothers to Yosemite many years ago, when they were more impressionable. But, I'm hopeful that I am not too late in showing them even little parts of the world. That they will know, in Kominksi's words, "...do the rest."

Range of Light

Toward the end of yesterday's bike ride I first noticed a change in afternoon light. Shadows lay differently on the pavement beneath my wheels, and in this summer that persists beyond its appointed months, I welcomed the change. The ride itself became somewhat interesting when I stopped after the first 20 minutes to telephone a woman with whom I have been trying to connect for a couple of days. Nothing like dripping sweat onto a notebook I had carried with me as I tried to take notes of bits of conversation I will have to remember.

Our connection was weak--she was in her car in Southern California, hundreds of miles away from me and my bike--but we managed to accomplish our purpose. She is one of a few people who might be instrumental in my own change of light, to use a poor metaphor. Late next week, after a couple of discussions and after weighing certain risks against potential rewards, some aspects of my life might be different. Most people who are old like me don't seem to make these types of changes, perhaps because we are fatter and slower and more comfortable than we remember ourselves being. We'll see.

Random Memories This Way Come

Fuel and fodder for the insomniac.

We're standing on the aircraft carrier's port catwalk, the ship sliding through warm still water somewhere in the vicinity of Guam. In the distance we see what looks to be a wave moving toward us in an angle that we gather will intersect the ship's bow. When the wave gets closer we realize that it is not water but something living--porpoises. There are 20 or so. They match the ship's speed and accompany us for awhile, then when they have satisfied their curiosity or quest for fun they slow down, change their angle, and are gone.

On the first day of a 5-day backpacking trip with 2 companions I step through a creek and let my leather Vasque Sundowner boots get soaked, and rather than stop to change socks, I keep hiking. By the end of the day my heels are marked by raw circles the size of Washington-head quarters, circles that ooze viscous liquid onto my wool socks. I have to pull strands of fabric free. Every painful step for the next 5 days makes those circles grow. The trip is one of too many miles each day, too many ascents and descents, and our water filter fails on the third day, forcing us to drink water when and were we find it during the day. Asprin does nothing to stop the pain in my feet, and I barely sleep because of it. The final day, 12 miles' worth of hiking, the 3 of us not only barely speak, we barely see each other. When we meet again where the car is parked, I show them my heels. "Wow," one of them says, "I didn't think they were that bad." When I finally get home I tell my wife I will never backpack again. I return twice more to that area in future years.

My cousin and I once stole silver dollars from a jar in my grandfather's house, and we used them to buy baseball cards and bubble gum. We haven't seen each other much in the ensuing years, but we both feel guilty about our crime. This is the same grandfather who enjoyed drinking bourbon, who, I have heard in other ensuing years, found it necessary to alienate his 3 children, one of whom was my father, and his wife. He probably beat the crap out of anyone he could, but I'm not sure about that. My grandfather visited our house every other Sunday when I was a kid in Illinois, before he died one January night, and he would bring doughnuts. He showed up in his yellow Chevrolet one winter Sunday and I ran outside with only socks on my feet to greet him, and he said "I should kick your butt" for not having shoes on. His wife, my grandmother, died in my cousin's house many years before we stole those coins.

For several years I have tried with little luck to attract hummingbirds to my backyard. First I put up a hummingbird feeder, but I tended to forget to keep it full of liquid. This last summer I have kept it full, and I have hung flower pots nearby as an additional attraction. My son noticed that, though we seldom see hummingbirds, the ones we do have seem to like the purple flowers in the pots.... The trail where I usually ride my bike is where squirrels like to hang out, and they seem to enjoy dodging my bike's tires. Lately, their mouths are full of what must be nuts--probably getting ready for autumn and winter. In my back yard the other morning, a dozen or so sparrows hopped about in the loose dirt, pecking with their beaks and flapping their wings in the dust. Is that flapping meant to disturb the dirt, to unearth something edible? Two robins joined them at one point, and though I did not have hummingbirds, I had other birds.... Are the birds, like the squirrels, getting ready for the end of summer? People should know these things.

The Long Goodbye

On the night before my oldest son leaves for a year in South Korea, the family minus one son/brother gathers around the table and feasts. For the 2 previous nights we also feasted--meat and vegetables and wine, even dessert; I feel as though Bachus and his friends dropped by for a visit. As a group we discuss my son's upcoming adventure, and those who have considered such things promise to visit him. I might have mentioned before that I once spent several days in South Korea, where various incidents contributed to my being stuck onshore, unable to return to the ship that had been damaged by a strong storm. My then-friend Kent and I found a bakery where we bought a chocolate cake and a couple bottles of Coke. We took these comestibles to our hotel room where we found we had neither bottle opener for the Coke nor forks for the cake. We managed to open the bottles using the shower head in the bathroom, and we ate the cake with our dog tags....

Today, my son has finished packing and done everything he can think of to get ready. The paperwork is organized and in a handy place; the clothing is separated and folded; the loose ends around town are tied securely to other ends. I have offered all the advice I can (probably offered too much, for that matter), but he seems to have things well in hand as any good juggler must. A wonderfully gifted solver of problems, he will do fine with or without my advice, and he is right to stop listening to me when I have said too much. Too often, it seems, we parents forget that most of what we have learned, we have learned on our own, that lessons learned carry more weight than advice taken.

At some level we have been saying goodbye for many months, separating in ways we need to, getting closer in other ways. His brothers, I know, will miss him, for he has treated them all well and has connected with each in the best possible ways. I enjoy seeing how they have developed their own histories over the years, how they have created and lived their own experiences without their parents in the picture. (They have secrets among them, too, and they have been prudent enough to disclose none of them to me.) I even feel a bit of jealousy--being metaphorically landlocked for so long finds me a bit antsy. Maybe that little thing, that sense of being tethered to one place, makes saying goodbye more difficult.

He's a lucky bastard, and I think I'll tell him as much.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

I would guess that my father was the person who taught me how to bait a hook, and often he would take my sisters and me to one or another local pond for a few hours of fishing. Mostly we used worms, though I remember my cousin taking me out one day and we used baloney surgically removed from my aunt's refrigerator. We got into trouble for that. And this was the same cousin who persuaded me that walking down the railroad tracks one sunny afternoon was a good idea--I was 4, he was 3--we got into trouble for that too. Someone found us standing outside of a bar, crying. That was my first ride in the back of a police car, and when we got back to the apartment we lived in, our parents fed us... baloney sandwiches. Then we got sent to different bedrooms to consider our sins.

But, back to fishing. I grew up using a bobber, probably because the small ponds we fished had nothing but small fish: blue gill, sunfish, the occasional catfish. I once hooked a turtle of some sort, which frightened me when I reeled it in. And once, fishing by myself, a muskrat surfaced, looked at me, and disappeared. That frightened me, too. My grandfather, though, was a true fisherman, and he and my grandmother took me to Ontario, Canada, when I was 12, and there we pursued walleye in the morning (no bobber, just a weighted line with a baited hook), which we'd then eat for lunch. In the afternoon we went after northern pike and muskie--big fish. We used lures for these fish, and though I quickly learned the art of casting and using my thumb on the open reel to stop the lure just shore of a log or the shore, too often I'd end up with a snag in my line. This, of course, caused my grandfather no small amount of frustration; he might have been embarrassed that I was even remotely related to him. He would turn out to be one of my true heroes, someone I could call a man's man. (I'd apply this to my father later, but only after years of battles and then, even later, deep contemplation.) We did not eat the pike and muskie, though I have photographs of myself holding them onshore. We must have given them to someone my grandparents knew.

Several years ago I stayed with my cousin at her family's cabin in northern Indiana, where we fished with worms and bobbers. I was happy to see that I could still remove a hook from a catfish mouth without getting my fingers pierced by the fish's whiskers, and I was even glad to see that I still felt some sadness for the greedy bluegill that swallowed a hook that could not be removed. I have fished other places, of course: for striped bass in the California Delta, for trout in Sierra lakes. I have not, however, delved into fly fishing, something my friend Shawn continues to both enjoy and write about. Shawn (and others I have known) possesses much more poetic patience than I ever will, a much better understanding of the art of fishing. I, on the other hand, am a plodder, suited to sitting and watching the white half of a bobber ride the crest of small waves.

I miss fishing. I miss watering the garden at night and getting up early the next morning to ply worms from the soft earth, and I miss casting a strand of filament out onto the water, hearing the plop of hook, line, and sinker as they begin their work, then feeling the first dip of the pole's tip as a fish samples the bait. And, I've come to miss watching my father remove fish from my hook, listening to my grandfather's admonitions as I sat in the boat, and watching my sons' faces when they, too, learned to fish. But, more than anything? I wonder just what the hell I was thinking a couple years ago when, on a quest to dispose of anything in the garage that was not being used, I disposed of a tangle of fiberglass poles and fishing line that had done nothing more than get moved from shelf to shelf for many years. Oddly, though, I did not dispose of my grandfather's homemade tackle box, which must be half a century old, or one of the open-face reels we used on that trip to Ontario.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes

Look out, all you rock n' rollers....

Thanks, David Bowie, for giving me a starting point.

* * *

Maryanne was the first woman I ever made cry. It was the day I left for bootcamp, and she had driven me to the recruiter's office. Unsure of what else to do, I let her sob against my should for a few minutes as we sat in the front seat of her car, then said I had to go. She was still crying as I walked away, and just as I'd seen in so many movies, I didn't look back--something like that happens and you know what's going on behind you. Maryanne and I had been dating since we'd graduated from high school a few months before, and we pretty much were approaching the point of hot and heavy. (Sidenote: A few nights earlier we'd double-dated with my then-best-friend Gary and his girlfriend, and as we were driving back to my house for cocktails in my parents' Ford Maverick a dog committed suicide by running into the front bumper of the car.)

Before heading to the recruiter's office that morning, my sisters and parents lined up in a sort of receiving line to give their goodbyes. My sisters were eagerly waiting for me to get out of Dodge so one of them could take over my bedroom, and I remember that after I hugged my mother, my father said, "You can hug me, too." I probably wouldn't have if he hadn't said that--kind of a male-thing, I suppose. At least for us.

Then, I was gone for 9 weeks, returning home for 2 weeks before heading out to my technical school in Pensacola, Florida, a pit of a place if ever there was one. I learned to drink beer there, however, so maybe even the worst pit has value. Bootcamp wasn't much of a challenge, really--I was used to people telling me what to do, so I fit right in. In many ways that's all a person has to learn in the military: do what you're told, tell people what to do. Maryanne and I must have said goodbye another time, but I don't remember the details. I do know that it would be years before another living creature would run into the front bumper of my car.

But I do remember most of the flight to Pensacola on a Continental Airlines jet, how deeply sad I was as, conspicuous in my dress blue uniform, I turned my face away from the person next to me and stared into the darkness. I had a pen with me, and I found a scrap of paper and wrote new lyrics to Rod Stewart's "Mandolin Wind," lyrics I planned to show to Maryanne one day. I was 18 and immature and leaving home for the first time, and I was not especially happy. Months later when I flew to Japan where I would spend over 2 years, I didn't feel half as much sadness. Perhaps I was more confident and mature, and perhaps because Maryanne and I had finally parted ways meant I had less to feel sad about.

Of my many regrets is never asking my parents how they felt when I left. They had let me ride and walk and hike without overly protective supervision for most of my childhood, so I had a good foundation of independence. Still, I have often wondered if they wanted to talk to me about what it felt like to watch their only son walk out the door--not just to college, not just to his own apartment, but to someplace a good way around the world.

In the next few weeks I will try to imagine what they felt: soon, my oldest son will be heading out to nearly the same part of the world I went to. He's older than I was when I left home, probably smarter and more self-confident. He is approaching this journey with excitement and external confidence, and he, too, has been raised to be self-sufficient and free thinking. I want to tell him how he'll feel at different points: sadness, anger, frustration, loneliness, isolation--most at different times but now and then all at once. But just as I was concerned only about myself and my sadness aboard that Continental Airlines flight, now I am imagining how I will feel as my son walks through the security checkpoint in San Francisco's airport--walking through a type of portal that takes him both literally and figuratively from one world to another. At that point he'll truly be on his own, and I can only hope that his mother and I have succeeded in giving him what he needs.

Doldrums

I once wrote a short story entitled "Horse Latitudes," a little piece about a marriage that is, to use another nautical term, in the doldrums. This time of year in northern California, the weather seems perpetually dominated by high pressure that builds up above the region and bakes us. I feel like a lobster in a covered pot that the cook forgot to fill with water. It'd be death with or without water, but being boiled is more dramatic than being... what--baked?

This same ridge of high pressure dominates what little bit of creative mind still exists in my pea-sized brain. My most not-so-recent short story, "The Map Reader," languishes in the needs-to-edited file, while the latest novel-in-the-works is little more than scribbles in a Rhodia notebook and a couple of plot points in search of a unified theme. In an effort to reclaim a bit of creative fire, I've resorted to reading novels rather than nonfiction--perhaps using my imagination a bit more will stoke that fire. Of course, the act of reading keeps a person away from writing, but what the hell.

Part of the secret is to pay attention--little gifts of creativity abound if we keep our eyes open. In his latest post over at These Rivers, Shawn does a nice job of illustrating what can happen when we keep our eyes and feet moving. Even sailors eventually made their way out of the Doldrums, and though they might have cursed the weather (or lack of it), I doubt they actually blamed it for anything. They put the sails up and caught whatever wind there was and moved on.

Bad Stretch of Time

A week ago I spent a day with Lazlo Kominski and got to listen to a couple of stories, one of which included Kominski's current Bad Stretch of Time, or BST. Without divulging details, this particular story includes several dramatic plot points, not to mention a couple of plot twists, and a good amount of back story. We live long enough and each of us will experience a BST, though certainly one person's BST might not seem so bad to someone who has endured a worse one. I gave Kominski some details about my own BST, which occurred many years ago but still plays into nearly every decision I make. Then we went into San Francisco where we looked at some books and had a beer, and the story-telling and conversation continued along July 4th sidewalk traffic that seemed eerily light.

How we in fact endure strings of very bad things varies, certainly; some of us choose medication, some of us choos denial, and some of us choose nothing. My father once experienced a brief BST, and I remember him telling someone that "things like this always seem to happen close together." My father would one day have a starring role in my own BST, and he ended up being quite right about the "close together" part.

I think of all this BST stuff because a couple of days ago I was driving home from work and watched a car fishtail and skid across 3 lanes of traffic, remarkably without hitting another vehicle. I lost sight of the car for a moment, and when I saw it again it was resting on its roof on the side of the freeway. My informal calculations determined that there was no room for the car to have flipped only once at about 60 miles before a sudden cessation of movement. I have rolled a car off this same freeway, though I was going only 30 MPH. I bounced on my roof and ended up on my wheels in a carpool parking lot, the engine still running, the wheels splayed out. I put the car into reverse and backed into a parking space, and I thought, "That was not fun." Somone stopped to help me and let me use his phone to call my wife so she could pick me up and take me to where I had to teach that night. This was about a year after I confronted someone who was trying to steal my neighbor's car, and that someone got perturbed enough at my attempted intervention to show me the pistol stuck into the front of his pants while I was keeping my eye on the screwdriver he had raised above his head. That wasn't fun, either.

But, neither of those events were part of my BST; in fact, they aren't more than a reflective digression from that car that tumbled and twisted in front of me. I've kept an eye on the news stories since the accident, but I've not seen anything that would tell me what happened, if anyone was hurt. I keep wondering if that moment was the start of a BST for whoever was in the car, or maybe someone's family.

Power Trip

One of the fun things about writing fiction is choosing which characters live and which ones do not. Maybe, deep down, writers are narcissistic sociopaths who allow their submersible dark side surface through their fingers, but that might be something I'd have to ask a therapist. Of course, I also believe that, given free rein, characters make their own decisions, decisions that sometimes cause their demise.

I'm thinking of this now because, with a nice pen and a Rhodia notebook on the table in front of me, I'm at the start of a new novel and trying to figure out who the characters are and what they'll do for the next 90-thousand or so words. I completed the first chapter a couple of months ago but then got stuck figuring out how--and even why--one of the characters would die. The death itself is instrumental to the plot and the protagonist's life, but this how and why had me stumped. Then, while out riding my bike one day, I solved the problem: someone else, not my first choice, would die. Simple.

My approach to most of my writing goes against what many people have told me either in person or in their own writing: do the planning before you do the writing. Unfortunately I am not much of a planner when it comes to writing, though it wasn't until I figured out my second novel's ending was I able to complete most of the story. I do enjoy letting the characters develop on their own, and I often feel that planning too much of their lives makes them less real. That my success as a writer is nonexistent, however, probably means that I should have learned listen to people who know about these things.

A good day with Kominski yesterday further helped me with some possibilities for this latest work. I am now, for example, considering at least one new character, someone who can add some fodder to the story. Both Kominski and my friend Shawn are very good planners when they write, and it does me good to hear their advice and to learn about their work habits. Talking to people like these also helps me think things through, lets me try out ideas.

I'm spending too much time not writing, but I kind of like this part of the writing process: figuring out who the characters are be so I can get to know them before I send them on their way. And, of course, it's always fun to see who has the real power: the characters or the writer.

Chicago, Chicago

April 9-10, 2009

A long flight takes me from the somewhat familiar to the familiar. After an extraordinarily long wait at Customs, I am allowed back into my native country and make my way to the Chicago Transit Authority's Blue Line that conveys me into The City of the Broad Shoulders, where my feet take over and propel me to the Palmer House Hilton. I have stayed here twice before, and I am enamored of the old-style hotel, the gilded ceilings in the large lobby. In my room I make myself as home as a person can be in a hotel, laying out these essentials.

After a walk of several miles, I find a perch in Miller's Pub, where food is always good, and order a domestic meal and a domestic beer (Honker's Ale). My waiter, Matt, sees me writing in my Moleskine. "What are you writing there, a book?" Matt says. I tell him of where I have just returned from and he says he wishes he had written down notes of all his experiences when he played professional soccer in South America. I ask him how he went from professional soccer to waiting tables; he points to his head and says, "brain tumor."

Of course.

I learn that he is from San Diego and wants to each English overseas, that he loves to travel and decided when he "was sick" not to spend his life not doing what he doesn't like. It is a good conversation, and it fits in well with conversations I had with both Sharon and two elderly women at the Windsor Hotel--a good cast of characters.

The remainder of my stay in Chicago itself is somewhat lazy, and I find that while wondering without a plan in London and Brussels was fine, I want a plan here. Perhaps it is fatigue, both physical and mental; perhaps my familiarity with the city edges out any strong excitement. When I leave, I am pleased to be headed home, and in my long layover in Dallas-Forth Worth airport I think back to the last 2 weeks, to what I have seen and the people I have met. And when I remember the people, I see a connection of theme: the elderly women who had breakfast with me at the Windsor House are probably still planning further travels in their carefree style. Sharon, so energetic and seemingly positive, must be performing somewhere; and Matt, the soccer player turned waiter and planning to teach, is still saving his money so that he can afford to live overseas.

I do not associate well with many people, but I found these 4 and thoroughly enjoyed hearing their stories. Then, just days after getting home, I ride my bike through wind and rain and am overtaken by a man about my age, a man who pulls alongside and starts talking. We speak of our occupations, and he tells me about his brain tumor, about still recovering from his treatments. He says his goal is to work at finding ways to connect people--not connect with them, rally, but to somehow attach them to other people. The rain and wind bother him less than they do me, and when I turn back toward home, now riding into the wind and rain, he smiles happily and tells me he has many miles to go.

The Easy Hotel

Back in London: April 7-8 2009.

The Easy Hotel near Paddington Station is clean and spartan, and I pay a bit of extra money for a remote control so I can watch a bit of TV during my stay. Though I will sleep no better for my 2 nights here than I have in any other bed during this trip, the bed itself is large and comfortable as I lie on it for a few minutes before heading outside again. I walk around and find my way to Hyde Park where I walk some more before, near dark, returning to my room.

Early the next morning I ride the Tube to Leicester Square, then walk aimlessly while trying to conserve what remains of my cash. At Covent Garden again I consume a finaly pasty for lunch, then watch the street performers, two of whom look like this:

Deciding I've had enough of the area on this, my final full day in London, I head back to the underground and come face to face with Sharon, who greets me with a friendly "Hi, Bob!" Of all the people on all the streets in London, and we meet again. I now know why she had been schlepping all of those suitcases from Brussels to London: they contain her outfits and props. She says that she will be performing in 45 minutes, and how can I not stick around to watch?

Her show is entertaining enough if not especially inspired or unique, and the audience seems reluctant to feed her anything in the way of energy. It's interesting to watch these barkers work the crowd: prodding them, teasing them, getting them to move closer "or there can't be a show." She juggles, she teases the men who have "volunteered" to help, and she looks like this:


She is confident and strong and enthusiastic--quite the busker.

At the end, I give her all of the coins I have left; we say our goodbyes and I walk to Trafalgar Square, through Soho, around Piccadilly Circus, around Parliament, then toward and across the Thames until, among thousands of tourists, then back toward the Hyde Park underground station where my legs seem to give out. I catch a train back toward Paddington and my friendly Easy Hotel. The next day I awake too early. I had packed the night before, so after a quick shower I check out of the hotel and step outside into a nice mist. At the Paddington Station I catch an express train to Heathrow Airport where I sit and wait to board the plane to Chicago.

Next time: Chicago, Chicago

Mussels in Brussels, Pt. 2

After a quick buffet breakfast on the morning of my first full day in Brussels, I headed out to see what more I could see. I wandered to the Parc Brussels, a small version of Hyde Park, then through the park to the Palais Royale. No royalty actually live in the palace, but its girth is impressive. This is the palace from the opposite end of the park.

And the palace itself looks like this:

Walking more, I come upon the Palace of Fine Arts, and after some internal debate, pay the five Euros and head inside. There I find many paintings by both Bruegel and Brueghal, and I tell myself to find out the difference between the two. One painting, by Pieter Bruegel, is De val van Icarus, which I am familiar with and think translates to The Fall of Icarus. I also find paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Georges Seurat, some of whose works I have seen before. Still, I find myself saddened by my lack of familiarity with so much fine art. I finally find something I can relate to--in an antique shop.


Again returning to the Grande Place, I buy assorted gifts to take home, then find an outdoor café where dining would seem to be pleasant. But, when I order a sandwich off the menu, the waiter tells me simply, “No sandwiches today.” So, I settle for a beer, a Stella Artois, and wonder where sandwiches are served. When the beer is gone, I head to an area I walked through yesterday—a couple of streets lined with hundreds of different restaurants. It is an amazingly touristy place where waiters stand outside and, in assorted languages, try to get people to stop and eat. My feet are tired and my stomach is empty, so I let myself be seated at one of the tables just inside a restaurant, and I order shrimp, a glass of wine, and a bucket of mussels. Below are photographs of one of the streets, and from my table just inside the restaurant.

Afterward, I of course get lost again as I navigate my way back to my hotel, arriving just after dark.

My final, partial day in Brussels involves little more than getting back to the train station for to catch the Eurostar back to London. And though I succeed in getting on the correct subway train and get off at what I think is the correct train station, I actually get lost in the station itself, end up at street level, and walk fairly aimlessly for half a mile before admitting I am lost. Retracing my steps, I find the station again, get lost inside of it again, and finally find the Eurostar terminal which is little more than a large waiting room. I buy a baguette and a chocolate bar, then eat them both as I wait for my train.

Then, as I read my book, I am approached by a tall, blonde woman who has stacked behind her several large suitcases. She asks if I will watch her bags while she finds the restroom, and though I have been trained not to do such things, I quickly say that I would be happy to. She disappears, and only minutes later two young men in black pants and white shirts appear, and they ask me if the suitcases are mine. I tell them that, no, they most certainly are not, but that their owner should be back soon. They talk among themselves as though trying to figure out what to do, and then they leave a card on the suitcases, a card that warns people to be aware of pickpockets.

When the woman returns, I tell her what happened, and we both laugh. Okay, I probably giggle since I’m not used to strange women talking to me. She tells me her name is Sharon, and she sits a couple of seats down. She says that she is a performer, that she travels much in Europe and makes a good living. She is also Canadian. We talk about many things: our respective occupations, our love of travel, where we grew up and went to school. We say our goodbyes when our train arrives, and as I watch her, I wonder how one person can require so much luggage.

I find my seat on the train, and I wonder what to make of Brussels. I am glad that I visited, but I am not sure I would visit again. My lack of knowledge of the city is certainly a detriment, as is my inability to speak the native languages. I would like to see more of Belgium, for I have heard many good things about the country. Now, though, I am returning to London, and I am glad to be going back to someplace familiar.

Next time: The Easy Hotel in the Small Town of London