On the bus

This morning I took a seat next to a woman who appeared to be over 85. Her walker was perched in the handicapped area and she couldn't have been over 5 feet tall. I already had my ipod in my ears, but I greeted her and sat down. Before we got to the bridge, she couldn't restrain her curiosity and she tapped my hand, asking about the device. She wanted to know if it was a radio. We chatted for a while about how things that she saw in Dick Tracy had all appeared to become a reality. I showed her that the ipod could even display video, and she was even more amazed.

She told me she was headed into the city on a weekly outing to the senior center at the Maritime Museum. She said that she did sculpture there, and that there were classes for all kinds of art. She grew up drawing, but now that she has macular degeneration, she has begun to sculpt.

I hope I'll run into her again. She reminded me that it is more interesting to chat with your seatmate than it is to listen to Dick Tracy's ipod.

Outside of time, in a foreign country

I am in Connecticut, a state which I always have to focus on while I type, to make sure I put the "connect" in it. I'm not sure why it's not pronounced "connect I cut", it would make it more fun to say, for sure. What I want to write about is how this state feels like a foreign country to Californians. Things are familiar, but just a little different. You know that's a house, but gee, it has three stories and a big porch and a $350,000 price.. so it can't be a house, it has to be a boarding house or B&B. That looks like a bridge but the date on it goes back to the 1600's. Incredible!

And the food is different, too. It seems closer to food that you'd get in Europe. The cheese is more authentic. The portions are huge. My theory is that the cook's grandparents are still living around here, and they are picky about the recipes being exactly like the one the brought from the old country. Either that or they are actually working in the kitchen. Out west, the cooks' parents split from their family and travelled out to see new places. They tasted a lot of different food and thought it might taste good if they mixed a little mexican pepper, say, in with the tomato sauce recipe that their italian grandma made. And grandma wasn't around to complain.

We are outside of time because we are spending time in a hospital, and that is innately a place with its own schedule and rotation. We aren't at work or doing our regular routines. We are living in motel and driving around on unfamiliar roads and making a lot of phone calls. We are thinking of time that we have not been together and trying to be "here" for each other now.

Magic Bus

This photo comes from here, a collection of simple jaw-dropping images of decorated busses in Pakistan. The American art car people have something to learn from these artists! This bus that's loaded with all the people on top reminds me of the bus we took the length of Ecuador on the Andean highway. The road runs across the tiptop ridge of the Andes, and we thought it would be a cheap and scenic way to see the country. Well, it was cheap. But scenary? no. We were virtually in the clouds the entire way. You could only see the crosses that lined the road, where previous busses had careened over the edge and killed all the passengers. There also were no bathroom stops, only stops for tire-changing and picking up more passengers to squeeze aboard. We sat in front of a woman who was sharing the same seat with two children and several chickens. At one point the child peed on the seat, and the German tourist who was sharing the row with her was not very pleased.

There was a King of the Bus, a very young boy whose job it was to collect any gear or boxes or animals that wouldn't fit on the bus, and pile them up on top. While the bus was moving, he'd climb down the outside ladder, grab the stuff, run up the ladder with it on his shoulders and store it somehow. He would also come aboard and collect the fare. People got on and off in the middle of nowhere. Out of the fog, you'd see people appear, standing along the road in woven sarapes and hats, with a sheep or a pile of bags. The King of the Bus would get them aboard and we'd be underway in minutes.

I have never been more happy to get off of a bus.

Close up view of the city

Take a look at this map viewer: Mapjack. What amazing closeups of the city I love. You can even take hikes - look at the Presidio paths just west of Golden Gate Bridge. These photos were taken last June.. I wonder if they plan to expand these images to more cities.

They are so much more vivid and hi-res than google's street view!

Things to love

Barbara on a barstool


Sidewalk tiles in Benicia


Art Deco tiles on a storefront


Spring is abloom - we have turned a seasonal corner

Benicia

We took a "tootle" around the bay yesterday, where we drove sort of in the direction where we thought we wanted to go, and ended up somewhere we hadn't been before. I thought I had been in Benicia before, but after getting there, I realized that I hadn't. It's a charming little town where there are many Victorian homes, a nice large grid of streets around an old-fashioned main street which ends at a long pier into the Bay. We had lunch outside a cafe (our first warmish day of the season), and we were struck at the number of teens and kids that were tooling up and down the street on bikes, foot and skateboard. It seemed like a Marin town, but instead of kids being carted around in SUVs, they were actually on the street. A large number of dogs were sighted, and Lola enjoyed the fancy dog treat store quite a bit (she poured on her charm, to finagle many samples).

Some of the stores were still the older type, with hand-lettered signs. There were a lot of empty storefronts, and mixed in were day spas and bars.

A straight line

I found this site fascinating. It's a mash-up with google maps that allows you to pick a spot on the map of the globe, and then choose a direction. Let's say I want to travel due east from San Francisco. Heading at 90 degrees east, going in a straight line, when I get to the east coast, do you know where I'd hit the Atlantic? I guessed that I'd go through St. Louis en route to somewhere in New Jersey.

Can you believe it's Jacksonville, Florida??

We are so used to the flattened out map of the world that we can't imagine it in the three dimensions.

Italy ahead

We are planning a vacation in Italy this year. I have only been in Italy once before, in 1970, when we passed through Milan on the way to my summer abroad in Switzerland. Since I've never studied Italian, I'm looking forward to learning a bit before going, and have downloaded some Italian lessons for my ipod. Last night, we watched Two Women, an early film with Sophia Loren as a feisty and sexy mother who is unable to save her daughter and herself from the scourges of war. Having the subtitles speeds up the language immersion process and gives you a false sense of understanding what's being said. It does seems quite similar to French, Spanish and Portugese (well duh, they are all latin languages), so I'm hoping to be able to converse a little by the end of April.

We are going to spend a week in Sicily and spend the rest of the time (at either end of that week) in Rome. We'll have to save lovely Tuscany and the famous sites in Venice and Florence for another visit. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to Sicily, but part of it is that it's more like a Greek island than the mainland. It's sure to be warm and sunny.

A wintery morning

Blogger has it out for my resolution to blog more. Ever since they upgraded to a newer version (that to me, looks completely the same, except for the ability to "tag" things - this term makes me feel slighly illegal, like a very untalented graffiti artist or some angry teenager with a can of paint), the publishing part of blogging is unreliable. And really, what's the point of blogging if you can't publish? And what's the point of sitting down to write if, when you click that button, you are faced with a list of error messages that make no sense?

Well, hope springs eternal, and here I am. Speaking of spring, I can't wait. While parts of the country are puzzled by seeing brown grass instead of snow, and all the warm temperatures, we are freezing here in sunny California. I have been wearing my flannel pajamas for too many nights to count. I'm not sure if I'd be quite so grumpy about the temperature if I weren't so old - I guess complaining about the weather is one of those things that kicks in at mid-life, like a compulsion to talk about your doctor and compare medications with people at a party.

OK, that was two paragraphs of complaints - my goal was to write about stuff I like. Birds at the feeder, Rosie O'Donnell's imitation of Donald Trump, a cup of hot coffee, the NY Times, especially on Monday when I can be sure I'll finish the crossword puzzle. On Fridays, I just throw up my hands in disgust and amazement. How could the puzzle makers be so clever as to come up with THREE phrases that run across the complete width of the square, all the same length, that fit together for down words as well? I get so overwhelmed thinking about their brilliance and process, that I can barely look at the clues.

I'm alone with Lola and my coffee this morning, as Barb is in Los Angeles. I'll join her there tonight for a quick weekend visit to celebrate some birthdays (not ours). We are going to be staying at a place called the "Sportsman's Lodge". I guess it is "historical" - for LA, that means it's been around for more than 25 years and there was probably some wood involved in its construction. I hope it's been upgraded. I think they could have upgraded the name to be more gender-inclusive: "The Sportperson's Lodge"; "The Sporty Lodge"; "The Lodge". It could be that just the name is the historical part, and it's been completely re-built.

Well, here goes - let's see if this post gets published!! I'll tag it for good luck.