Today we went on a guided walk at a property owned by the Greenbelt Land Trust. The walk was led by Kendra Callahan, a Greenbelt staffer, and Denise DeLuca, the author of Re-Aligning with Nature. We were encouraged to contemplate the oak trees and other plants on the property and try to imagine what lessons we could learn from them about how to deal with stress. Kendra, the naturalist, told us how the oak trees responded to a stressful period of heat and drought last summer by putting all of their energy into the single task of producing lots of acorns, thus ensuring the survival of their species. Denise led a discussion of how the experience of nature can provide us with new and healthier ways to approach the life challenges we face. Another gem of wisdom contributed by a participant was this guideline, “Don’t spend 20 minutes on a 10 minute problem.”
Sunday, April 7th
We went over to Albany today to get some free juice–the electrical kind. Our electric car, a leased Hyundai Ionic 5, came with two years of free fast charging at any Electrify America charging station. Of course there are no Electrify America charging stations in Corvallis. So that’s annoying. But there is an EA charging station at the Albany Walmart, which is about ten miles away. That’s good, especially since we often go over to Albany anyway for one thing or another. But two of the four EA chargers at Walmart have been out of service for the last three months and having only two chargers in working order usually means having wait in line to charge. So that’s bad.
Of course we can always use our charger at home, which is fine. But it’s not quite the same as getting free charging, which of course is not actually free–but never mind. Today we were celebrating the fact that the two bad chargers have finally been repaired. So off we went and got juiced.
On the way home we stopped for a walk at Albany’s Falling Waters Park, a series of ponds that provide wetland habitat while at the same time helping with wastewater treatment. As you might expect, there are a lot of No Swimming signs at this particular park. Crazy as it may seem, some families just don’t seem to care.
Tuesday, April 9th
E had her Better Bones class in the morning and then a THEPAJ meeting at lunch time. By 2:30 we were done with our responsibilities and headed off for an overnight trip to the coast. Once we got to Newport, we checked in to a unit at Little Creek Cove, then took a bit of a beach walk, followed by dinner at Local Ocean.
The view across the street from Local Ocean…
…and a view of a hibiscus margarita with black lava salt.
Wednesday, April 10th
We had a leisurely 2-mile walk through Mike Miller park, a forested area just south of Newport that we had never visited before. Much of the coastal land south of Yaquina Bay is former dune land. Nearest the shore are the modern dunes which are still shifting and presumably still growing. Just inland from the beach, plants appear and begin to fix the old dunes in place. Mike Miller park is about a mile inland and at first glance doesn’t look like a sand dune at all. The dominant plants on its western edge–the part nearest the sea–are shore pines and rhododendrons. This is also the flattest part of the park and one section of the trail runs north along an old railroad bed. The railroad was built during the first world war in order to transport spruce logs from Yachats to the port of Newport. In that era spruce was much in demand to make airplanes and there were no roads along this part of the coast.
The Mike Miller trail soon leaves the railroad bed and turns eastward and upward. Before you know it, the vegetation changes completely. You get to an area where the layer of soil atop the old dunes is thick enough to support a towering forest of Sitka spruce. Only in the bottoms of the little rills can you see the sand that underlies it all.
After the walk, we went straight back to Corvallis so that E could be ready for her evening activity, a soil science lecture by the Dean of the OSU College of Forestry. Don’t ever call it dirt, said he, it’s soil.
Thursday, April 11th
Tertulia today with J and R at Coffee Culture. R told us something else about Sitka Spruce, the fact that its range is restricted to a narrow band of land near the coast. It grows on the Coast Range slopes that face westward toward the sea, but is not found anywhere east of the first ridge.
Today’s trivia question: What famous World War 2 era airplane was designed by Howard Hughes and what was it really made of?
After tertulia, E kept busy, working with M to plan a trip to Joshua Tree, going to exercise class, meeting with her seamstress, and finally doing Laughter Yoga via Zoom. Good thing it was M’s night to cook.
Monday, April 15th
In the morning we went for a walk in the Finley refuge. We tried to take the Mill Hill trail but were forced to turn back when we encountered a really nasty section of trail. The track itself was all deep-looking mud and the vegetation on both sides included tons of poison oak. Well. We decided to go in a different direction and took the connector trail over to Woodpecker Loop.
Despite some areas of devastation from the ice storm, the forest was lovely at this time of year. We saw a few late trilliums and fawn lilies and also a calypso orchid or two. We also saw wild iris. And we couldn’t help but admire the lovely color of all the new poison oak leaves. They are really an amazing combination of shiny reds and greens. And we saw some camus flowers, which we don’t seem to see at all in the forests nearer home.
Camus
We had J and B over for dinner and B’s visiting brother J came along. Brother J lives in Maryland on a rural property where he is in the process of rehabbing and restoring both house and grounds. Challenges include a wooded area where the once dominant ash trees have all succumbed to ash borer. The remaining trees are the aggressively invasive tree of heaven, which in turn are the preferred home of the lantern fly, an even more obnoxious pest. There are of course lots of ash trees in the wetter areas here in Oregon. We’d better enjoy them while we can.
The dinner menu included cookie sheet vegetables and feta served with orzo. E made a salad and also did the veggie feta bake. Due to past trauma, however, she is strongly averse to cooking pasta of any kind, so M helped a little. And J contributed a lemon merengue pie for dessert. A very nice evening.
Today marked the start of our trip to San Diego, where we’ll be doing a four day Road Scholar tour. When that ends, we’ll stay over a couple of extra days so M can pick up a ridiculous rental car and drive us around a little.
The whole thing started with a drive to the Eugene airport, just 40 miles away. We took the truck, of course, because E couldn’t bear the thought of her Ioniq 5 sitting outside in the economy lot where who knows what might happen to it. We had a direct flight to San Diego that took about two and a half hours. We flew on Alaska Airlines, but our plane was not a Boeing 737 Max and we didn’t notice any doors flying off. From the airport we caught a shuttle to downtown. That trip was a big surprise. It was so short! We didn’t realize that the San Diego airport is right next to downtown. In a pinch, we could have walked to our hotel. How often does that happen in a big city?
The tour hotel was a Marriott on the bay front. We checked in and had our first meeting of the tour group in a hotel meeting room. We had an orientation session accompanied by a pasta dinner. We started to settle in to the idea of be taken care of for a few days.
Monday, January 8th
Our program started with a tour of the southern part of San Diego Bay. Much of the south bay is lined with U.S. Navy anchorage and shipbuilding facilities.
The U.S.S. Midway was completed just after the end of WW2. It was retired from service in 1996 and is now a museum ship.
There was lots of activity in the Navy shipyards…
…but not everything in the bay is military. Here’s what the locals call the Banana Boat. It arrives in San Diego about once a week and takes two or three days to unload. Then it sails back to Central America to load up again.
Tuesday, January 9th
The highlight of today’s activities was a visit to Balboa Park, which is one of the largest parks in America, fifty percent larger than New York’s Central Park. It has a number of lovely buildings that go back to the its origin as the site of the Great San Diego Exhibition of 1915. It also has a host of Eucalyptus trees, including this relatively rare Rainbow variety.
Wednesday, January 10th
Today we toured the Midway and also visited the San Diego Zoo. Both were excellent, but the Midway was the most fascinating. We had a wonderful docent, a retired Navy helicopter pilot who had spent a part of his career serving on the Midway. We saw a large variety of vintage and military aircraft, from prop driven WW2 torpedo bombers to a modern jet fighters.
Here’s a Huey helicopter gunship from the Vietnam era.
The Zoo was also impressive in its way, very beautiful. It’s a large park with very spacious animal enclosures and hundreds (or maybe thousands) of trees. The elephant area covers many acres. All the animals have a chance to stay out of sight of the public when they choose. E’s chief goal was to see giraffes, since she had recently read “West with Giraffes.”
We found several.Also this thing.
Thursday, January 11th
Today we visited the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. We got to walk a couple of miles accompanied by another very knowledgeable volunteer docent. One thing he told us is that pine bark beetles by themselves are not a problem for pine trees. All pines, he told us, have bark beetles living in their outer layers of bark. A pine forest can contain many millions of bark beetles and still be quite healthy. Trouble starts when a tree is water stressed and begins to dry up. At that point bark beetles have to bore farther into the tree to find moisture. If they bore far enough, they destroy the structures that normally move moisture and nutrients up and down the tree. Once the flow of water is interrupted, the tree is doomed–and presumably so are the beetles living on it.
Today was the end of the Road Scholar Tour. We had a nice dinner and said goodbye to our guide and our fellow participants. We were both sad and glad to see it end.
Friday, January 12th
M went out this morning and picked up a rental car, a 2018 Audi R8 coupe with a 532 horsepower V-10 engine mounted just behind the seats. They say the car can go from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds. Top speed is supposed to be 170 or so. New ones cost between $161,000 and $253,000, but you can get a used one, like the one we rented, for around $135,000. But before you run out and buy one, be aware that it has very limited luggage space.
As M had planned, we drove out to Mt Palomar, 50 miles northwest of San Diego. The Palomar Observatory is on the north east side of the mountain. There are several telescopes at the observatory, including the 200-inch Hale telescope, which was the largest telescope in the world from 1949 to 1975. Quasars were first discovered by astronomers using the Hale. We came close to the observatory but turned back due to snow on the road. There was still plenty of wonderful scenery.
Here’s a view from most of the way up the mountain.
And here’s the car…
….and one of the occupants.
Saturday, January 13th
We took a little coast drive today, going north on Highway 101 up to Carlsbad. Even though we came back on the freeway, somehow we never managed to get our speed up to 170.
We spent our last evening at the Marriott having a light supper on their fifth floor rooftop terrace.
Here’s what it looked like when we got there…
…and here’s another view a little later. The red, white and blue lights are on the Midway.
Sunday, January 14th
Okay, time to head home. M returned the Audi and we were just packing up when we got a fatal text. Our Alaska Airlines flight to Eugene was cancelled. Oh dear. Was it because of the weather or because half of their fleet had been grounded after the blown-out door incident? They didn’t say. Instead they offered a partial routing that would have taken us to Steamboat Springs, Colorado on Tuesday and from Seattle to Corvallis on Wednesday. (It seemed that they hadn’t yet figured out how to get us from Colorado to Washington. But probably they were working on it. )
We didn’t like that and decided to rent a car and drive home. (We had just had our coffee and it seemed like a good idea.) We checked out of the hotel and ubered to the airport where we picked up another rental car, one somewhat less crazy than the R8. We were on the road by 11:00, heading north on I-5, a road that would take us all the way to Eugene. The total distance was 978 miles; we thought we could make in two reasonably easy days, which would get us home by Monday night.
The road was flat and straight going up California’s central valley. Traffic moved fast. By 7:30 PM we’d done over 500 miles. That seemed like enough. We stopped at a Hampton Inn in Woodland, a town just outside of Sacramento. We found an Indian restaurant with a sign saying Under New Management and decided to try it. The new owner was a very nice young man. He wore a turban, so we’re thinking he must be a Sikh. The food was good and also plentiful. We took away enough for the next day’s lunch.
Monday, January 15th
We got on the road again by 8:00. On Sunday we’d driven up the bottom two thirds of California; only the top third of CA and half of OR remained. There are some mountains on the border between the two states and the pass there can be treacherous in the winter. But our weather continued fine and we had dry pavement all the way across. We saw just a little snow off to the sides here and there. At a rest stop just past Lake Shasta we had a fine Indian food lunch . And by the way, here’s the car that got us there:
It’s a Kia Seltos, lemon yellow with AWD and Florida plates. Just the thing to drive into an ice storm.
So going over Siskiyou pass was no problem. However, as we were coming down the other side and into Oregon, we started to get warnings about trouble farther ahead. The Eugene and Corvallis area had been hit with a series of ice storms. Rain was falling out of a warm air layer up high. But the temperature down below was in the low twenties, so when a raindrop hit the ground–or anything else–it turned immediately into ice. The more it rained, the thicker the ice layer got. Really, it’s kind of a cool process. But of course it’s not too good for driving and it’s also hard on trees. We learned that all the roads leading north were closed at a point about twenty miles south of Eugene. It seemed clear that we wouldn’t be getting home this day. We drove as far as Roseburg and stopped there for the night.
Tuesday, January 16th
This morning we checked the weather. It was still bad, with freezing rain predicted for both Eugene and Corvallis. But the I-5 was open, at least for the moment. What to do, what to do. Hang around Roseburg for a day or two? Nah. We wanted to be home. We loaded ourselves back into the Seltos and went off to see what we could see.
What we saw was nice dry pavement all the way up to Cottage Grove, a town just twenty-five miles from the Eugene airport. From there on, though, a thick layer of ice covered the road and we began to see lots of jackknifed semis and other stranded vehicles. We could also see where many trees had fallen onto the highway and had been cleared off. Traffic was heavy with lots of trucks. But everyone was being really careful and the average speed was less than twenty miles per hour. Our all-wheel-drive Kia served us well and eventually we made it to the Eugene airport where we could turn it in to Avis and retrieve our truck.
Of course the truck, when we found it, was heavily iced over, having been through several days of ice and snow storms. On the hood we found a layer of ice and snow two and a half inches thick. The windshield had a layer of clear ice about an inch thick. The passenger side had gotten the worst of the weather and was also covered by a thick layer of pure ice. We could see at a glance there was absolutely no chance of opening the passenger door anytime soon. Fortunately, there was less ice on the driver’s side and we managed to open the driver’s door, just by speaking nicely to it for a minute or two. Then we could start the engine. When it warmed up a little, we turned on the defroster. When the windshield glass finally started to get warm, the ice that covered it started to come unstuck from the glass underneath it. So instead of having to scrape the ice off, we were able to pry it off in big chunks. But what about the wipers? We were pretty sure we would need those. It took a while, but we finally got most of the ice off of them too. Just about then, it started to rain and of course those drops pretty much froze as soon as they landed. Oh boy.
But at least we were on the road. From the airport we headed up Highway 99 toward Corvallis, in 4-wheel drive all the time and moving awfully slow. There were a few other vehicles on the road but not all that many. Snow is rare in these parts and we were amazed to see how different everything looked. It was strange to realize that neither of us had ever seen this part of Oregon covered with snow and ice. Here’s what some of the farms and orchards looked like:
We made it home eventually. On the way, the truck shed some of its ice, but when we arrived there was still no way to open that passenger side door.
What a strange trip it was: beginning with an 80 mile per hour cruise up a ten-lane freeway in sunny San Diego and finishing with an 20 mph crawl along an iced over two laner. It was awful but also kind of fun in its way. It’s amazing what you can do if you’re foolish enough to try. And what was our reward? Well, it turns out we didn’t have to worry about getting dinner because H and T invited us for spaghetti. Nice!
Wednesday, January 17th
It was a cold icy morning but by midday the temperature started inching up. We managed to pop open the passenger door of the truck. Later on, when evening came around, the world was still iced over, but we heard some tell-tale dripping sounds as the melting finally began.
We’ve just acquired another electric car. Here’s a photo of M charging it up, which is very brave of him considering that a tuxedo-wearing dog the size of Godzilla has stationed itself near the charging station.
Saturday, December 30
E has decided we need to see some movies. Two days ago we went to a real theater and watched The Boy and the Heron, a new film by animator Hayao Miyazaki. About eight years ago Miyazaki, who is now 82, announced his retirement from filmmaking. But clearly he was not able to stop working and the result is awesomely beautiful. If you haven’t seen The Boy and the Heron and aren’t familiar with Miyazaki’s work, you might think from the title that it is a certain kind of movie. But no, it’s a little more complicated than that.
We also watched Maestro on Netflix. Maestro stars Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre, the Costa Rican-Chilean actress he was married to. The film is full of beautiful images in both black and white and color. It has a tremendously high energy level and a some great music. It’s seems choppy at times, but biopics are like that. Did it tell us more about Bernstein than we wanted to know? Possibly.
Next up was Ferrari, with Adam Driver playing Enzo and Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura. The movie is set in 1957, a time when the company was in financial difficulties and the marital relationship had been badly wounded not only by Enzo’s infidelities but also by the recent death their young son from MS. The movie mixes racing drama with private life and includes scenes with both Laura the wife and Lina the long-term mistress, with whom Enzo had another son. Yes, it’s another film about a “great” man who is unfailingly unfaithful. But we liked it anyway. Adam Driver was very good and watching Penélope Cruz work was a joy. In the film, as in real life, Laura Ferrari was not just Enzo’s wife, she was also an equal share owner of the company. So there was some meat to the role. Ferrari also features beautiful vintage race cars and lovely countryside along the route of the famous Mille Miglia, a race that was so dangerous to drivers and spectators that it was banned after 1957.
The film is based on the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: the Man and the Machine by the inimitable Brock Yates. Yates was an amateur racing driver and a long-time automotive writer, editor, and TV commentator. It was Yates, along with Car & Driver editor Steve Smith, who first conceived of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash–a race that was never banned because it was never legal in the first place. Yates won the Cannonball in 1972 along with co-driver Dan Gurney. They drove a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney later commented: “At no time did we exceed 175 MPH.”
Sunday, New Year’s Eve
Well, we had waffles with maple syrup for breakfast. Lovely. Then we took a long walk in the OSU forest up near where we used to live. It wasn’t raining and it wasn’t too cold. We got around five thousand steps and sixteen floors, or so said the phone. What the phone did not tell us was what that means in terms of tablespoons of maple syrup, which is what we really needed to know. Instead, we had to use the online Steps to Calories Converter. Couldn’t someone just make a Steps to Maple Syrup Converter?
In the afternoon, E had a zoom call with S and Mrs H, two of her friends from the early days. The trio wanted to get together to share their thoughts on this meaningful occasion.
After this we had fondue for dinner and then turned to the vitally important matter of this year’s jigsaw puzzle and its accompanying bottle of champagne.
Monday, January 1st
Progress is slow on the puzzle. After working for several hours last night and continuing for most of today, we’re nowhere near done.
Thursday, January 4th
We had a nice dinner at Koriander with B and B. They had pictures of their neighborhood New Year’s Eve party. Looked like a really great time.
And speaking of New Year’s Eve, we finally finished our puzzle. E says it had way too much snow.
Friday, January 5th
We had our traditional Peppermint Pig evening with B, J, and C. We finished with pig sprinkles over ice cream.
Saturday, January 6th
We’ve been trying to get a few things done before we leave on our trip. We’re flying to San Diego tomorrow, which should be exciting because we’re flying on Alaska Airlines. In the last month they’ve had two incidents, one involving a nutty pilot and another when a door came off during a flight from Portland to Ontario, California. What next?
When we hike, we always like to have a small piece of chocolate and a little nip of something to finish off our lunch. You can imagine how stressed we were to discover that one of our two drink cups was badly cracked. We couldn’t just replace it from where we got it (Taco Time) because that source has switched to environmentally sound paper cups. Much as we applaud that change, it left us high and dry when it came to wee dram sized cups. What were we to do? We checked online and found that we could get either 125 cups for $2.55 (just over two cents per cup) or 2,500 cups for 27.99 (just over one cent per cup). Clearly, the large order would be a better deal. But what would we do with the 2,499 extra cups? How often do we go hiking with that many friends? Hmm. Fortunately, one of our local supermarkets has saved the day. E noticed that the store was giving away tiny samples of super expensive cheese and that each sample came in its own 1-oz. translucent plastic Solo cup! Whoopee. Now we have three good cups, the oldest one being slightly yellowed but still in good working order.
Old set on the left; new on the right.
Saturday, May 6
Lots of yard work today. E replanted a succulent that hadn’t been doing well and also worked to keep her Russian sage from being smothered by the weird, super prolific blue flowered plants, the ones that go crazy this time of year. Here are some of them trying–hopefully in vain–to strangle our red rhododendron.
Sunday, May 7
M went out and tried again to drive between Harlan, just south of Highway 20, and the Falls Creek fish hatchery, just north of Highway 34. He had tried it from north to south last time but came out in the wrong place. This time he tried going from south to north, but didn’t get anywhere at all because Falls Creek Road was closed just three and a half miles in. He found some consolation by driving up into the Alsea Falls area and discovering a new way to get from there to Dawson.
Dawson, by the way, is home to the old Hull-Oakes lumber mill. For a long time, Hull-Oakes was the last steam powered sawmill in the country. It’s not primarily steam powered anymore, but the mill continues in operation and has an old-timey feeling. The steam power system is still in place ready to start up again at a moment’s notice. (Or maybe a day or two’s notice, but you get the idea.) There’s a nice video about Hull-Oakes here. You can follow the process from log truck to log pond, to cutting bed, to lumber yard. Incoming logs are hand measured and nothing is computerized.
E took a long walk in our little forest close to home and later worked on re-reading The Lincoln Highway, which is up for discussion in her book club this month.
Monday, May 8
We went on a tour of an area managed by Greenbelt Land Trust, our local land protection organization. The tour took place on a protected area of four hundred and four acres along the Willamette River about twenty miles south of Corvallis. It’s called Harkens Lake and is the result of conservation easements purchased by GLT from the owners, one portion in 2011 and another, smaller one in 2017. Both sections are former agricultural land that is being restored with the aim of re-creating a natural riverside forest that includes backwaters and seasonal wetlands. GLT estimates that this will not be fully achieved for another 150 to 200 years, but they’ve got a start.
In this satellite photo the conservation area shows up as a large, roughly triangular shape in the middle of the picture. Near the bottom of the photo, where two rows of trees come together to make one point of the triangle, there is a gate that now blocks the road. There were about two dozen of us on the tour and we all parked our vehicles in a wide space just in front of that gate. We had a brief introduction to the project from our GLT tour host, who then introduced Jim Cassidy, an OSU instructor, farm manager and soil scientist, who had agreed to come along and give us some information about soil: soil in general, local soils in particular, and the changes in soil that result from transitioning agricultural land back to natural forest.
Then we started off, walking around the gate and heading northeast paralleling the river. The small light colored area on our left was the most recently acquired easement area and had been replanted with native species just three or four years ago. Our road veered left, away from the river. Soon we came to a restored area from the oldest easement area. The horizontal line in the center of the photo marks the border between the old and new sections. The plants and trees in the older part are darker green in the photo.
At several points on the walk, we stopped to get mini lectures on various soil related topics. The basic nature of Willamette Valley soils is that they were deposited in the valley by gigantic floods that occurred at the end of the last ice age, from 13,000 to 15,000 years ago. These floods were caused by the collapse of ice dams that were up to two miles high. When one of these collapsed due to warming temperatures, a lake the size of Lake Superior would suddenly be released and go rushing westward toward the Pacific Ocean, carving out some incredible geologic features along the way. The floods eventually came down the Columbia Gorge–creating the Gorge as they did so–and most of the water and debris went west out to sea. The floods were strong enough to carry massive boulders along with them and it is now possible to find large pieces of stone from Montana and British Columbia on the ocean floor fifty miles west of the current mouth of the Columbia River.
On their way to the Pacific Ocean, the floods passed the mouth of the Willamette at what is now the city of Portland. At this point a small portion of the flood waters spread south down into the Willamette valley. This small portion was enough to carry so much silt and gravel that when the last flood receded, the original landscape was covered with a hundred or more feet of new soil and the formerly rugged terrain was dead flat. So the first thing to know about Willamette Valley soil is that it all comes from somewhere else. “See this?” asks Jim, holding up a rock he just picked up from a ditch bank. “This is metamorphic rock and the nearest natural metamorphic formations are in British Columbia.”
The small red pin in the photo marks the spot where we stopped and watched as Jim dug down about ten inches into the soil and brought up a shovelful for us to examine. To examine it properly requires running it through your hands to feel the size of the granules and get a sense of the relative proportions of the basic soil components of sand, silt and clay. To get a really good idea, you need to put some in your mouth and feel it with your lips and tongue, as he demonstrated.
Jim is a wonderful scientist and teacher, but he also has another gig. Before he went to college, he was a bass player and founding member of the band Information Society, which had a string of hits in the nineties and which has continued–in various incarnations, all including Jim–to make music unto the present day. That’s Jim in the middle of the photo below.
Tuesday, May 9
Partly cloudy today with highs in the 60’s–very different from yesterday’s cold and damp.
Wednesday, May 10
Lots of garden chores these days, much of it involving unwanted grass or removing unwanted length of grass.
Thursday, May 11
Tertulia, exercise class, gardening, all that stuff. But also, we took E’s wedding ring to the jeweler’s to have it rebuilt: new half shank, restored mill points, and restored flower design to the extent possible. It may not be done in time for our anniversary, but that’s okay. This has needed doing for a long time. The ring belonged to M’s grandmother, Hazel, so it has sentimental value in addition to its good looks.
We got a take-out dinner from Kahlo Naser, the new Syrian restaurant. The food was delicious, plus we didn’t have to worry about their disorganized service and we could comfortably have a beer with dinner. Nice.
Friday, May 12
Ack, more gardening. The weather is getting much warmer. We work only in the mornings. It’s too hot in the afternoon. And the forecast for Sunday is 90. Yikes. Fortunately, we’re planning to be at the coast on Sunday; and the forecast there is for just the high seventies.
Saturday, May 13
With the continuing warm weather, we have to transition to summer mode. Part of that is getting the patio into shape. We took the cover off our big umbrella and raised it up to where it needs to be. The mechanism is stiff from injuries stemming from a fall last year, so it wasn’t all that easy, but we persevered, in spite of our resident hornet who makes her nest in the top of the umbrella post. E also uncovered and cleaned the patio table and chairs.
For lunch we went to visit our friend J, who recently suffered a broken shoulder from a fall of her own, which happened while she was dog walking. She’s having shoulder replacement surgery next Friday and is going to be one-armed for quite a while. We took her a deli lunch and sat with her in her back yard in the shade. She has two big old black locust trees that are just now leafing out. Beautiful to look up through. If we had some actual trees in our yard, we wouldn’t have to mess with our cranky umbrella.
Sunday, May 14, Mothers Day
In the morning we went off to meet A for a Mother’s Day brunch at Local Ocean over in Newport. As we neared the coast we realized that the weather was not getting any cooler. Au contraire, at 11:45 in the morning, it was 92! So much for forecasts. This is close to the all-time record high for Newport. It’s definitely warmer than either of us has ever experienced there.
But Local Ocean was comfortably cool. And the food was awesome as usual. E and A shared a big bowl of LO’s famous Brazilian seafood stew with the coconut milk base. M had ling cod fettuccine with andouille sausage slices and melted manchego. Ooof. We had fun talking about Ze Frank and his True Facts videos, which we had all just discovered. The videos are very funny and very informative, occasionally too informative, showing you more than you might want to know. If you are not familiar with Ze Frank’s work, you should become so immediately. But do NOT begin with his video about hippopotami. Try owls instead.
After lunch we went to Ona Beach and put our feet in the river to cool off a bit. Later in the day we met again for dinner at a brewpub in the town of Depot Bay. The bay itself covers only 6 acres and is said to be the smallest navigable bay in the world.
The boat docking scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed in Depot Bay.
After dinner, we took a walk to watch the sunset.
By the time we got back to Newport, it was dark and we had some trouble finding our hotel. Was that because we are old and easily confused? Well…yeah. But you know…at a certain point we realized that it wasn’t just dark, it was really quite dark. Was that because we had somehow been blindfolded by evil spirit pranksters? Well…no, it wasn’t that dark. But there was a problem: the power was out all along the seaside part of the city. So, once back in our room, we had the annoyance of no air conditioning for a couple of hours…
Monday, May 15
When we woke this morning and looked out our window, we found a different world: fog over the sea and no sun anywhere. The local temperature was fifty-five degrees. Now that’s exactly what we would have expected in Newport at this time of year. It made the previous day seem unreal, as if it had been a dream. Or maybe just a brief vision of the future.
It’s rainy and cool these days, with nighttime temperatures in the low thirties and highs in the forties.
Tuesday, April 18
E went to her monthly book club meeting. They talked about The Fox and I: an uncommon friendship by Catherine Raven. E liked the book because of the fox, of course, but also because of the author’s knowledge of nature. For next month they’re reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
Wednesday, April 19
Today we went into the Cascades for some snowshoeing. It seems late in the year for it, but it’s been cold this year. We went to a place called Lava Lakes, which is just two hours from home and sometimes has hardly any snow at all. But there was plenty today, with quite a bit more falling as we went along. It was nice: fresh snow on the trail and no one else around.
We wandered off the main trail and sat down for lunch…
…which included dessert. Note the crack in one of our cups. They’re from Taco Time but TT doesn’t have them any more. Will we never be able to replace this one?
It was only snowing lightly during lunch; on the way back to the trailhead there was a lot more.
Just before the end, E made an angel.
Thursday, April 20
Back down in the real world, E went walking with N from her book club. They started at the fairgrounds, walked around the base of Bald Hill (which has not been bald for at least 50 years), and then headed east. They did a little of the trail toward Fitton Green before turning back. E says that she got 12,000 steps. Yo.
Friday, April 21
Rain in the morning, easing off at around 10:30. That was about when we started a walk in the OSU forest, our goal being to check on the progress of the fawn lilies. It turns out that progress is slow.
We saw lots that were just getting ready to open…
…but only one that was starting to unfold.
Saturday, April 22
Much warmer weather today, with partly sunny skies and a high near seventy. In our yard, bed #1 is putting on something of a show: the flowering currants are in full bloom, and the dwarf irises have just popped out. The raggedy purple tulips have been out for a while; other tulips are still unfolding.
Sunday, April 23
The warm weather pulls us out into the yard. M is replacing a dying blueberry and rehabbing the area around it. E is dealing with grass incursions in her succulent bed in the back yard just outside our window. In the front she is expanding the range of her thyme. She has also been stocking the squirrel feeder with peanuts, mostly because she wants to keep the squirrels away from the bird feeder.
The feeder works pretty well. When the squirrel steps down onto the lower board, it pushes the roof board up, allowing access to the cupboard. Birds don’t weigh enough to make it work. It drives the bluejays crazy. They can see the nuts through the glass, but it’s really hard for them to get the top to open.
Also this week, some very sad news from Spain. E’s dear friend Margie passed away on Thursday. She took a big chunk of E’s heart with her, but we are grateful to have had a last visit with her this winter.
We’re thinking of going to stay overnight on the coast. We’d go over in the afternoon, stay the night, and then hike on the following day before heading home. For some reason, it seemed best to do it on Monday and Tuesday. Monday was supposed to be very rainy, but Tuesday was supposed to be only moderately rainy. That should work.
Monday, April 10
As predicted, it’s really rainy today. And…the forecast has changed. It now calls for lots of rain tomorrow also. Oh well, we’re committed now.
We stayed at the Adobe resort in Yachats. We ate dinner in their dining room, which sits on a low cliff just a few yards from where the waves are crashing against the nearest rocks. Lots of big windows give a panoramic view of the ocean, up and down the coast. Will those few yards of rock and earth eventually wear away and the Adobe dining room fall into the sea? Maybe. But maybe not for a while. The food was very good, but expensive. We paid more for dinner than for our room.
Tuesday, April 11
Woke up at 7:00 and it was pouring down rain. By the time we got breakfast the sun was out. Huh? It stayed mostly sunny all day. So much for forecasts.
Our hike was in the Sutton Recreation Area, about 40 minutes south of Yachats, almost to Florence. To get there we drove south down Highway 101. For most of the way the highway runs very near the rugged coast and the views are spectacular. But then, about ten miles north of the town of Florence the highway drifts southeast away from the shore and runs inland. On the satellite image below, Highways 101 is the prominent blue line that goes up and down through the right half of the picture. Our hike began at the end of Sutton Beach Road, the smaller road that runs up closer to the beach.
The land between the beach and the highway consists of ancient sand dunes that have been mostly–but not entirely–colonized by what is now a forest ecosystem.
The size of some of the trees shows that plants have been growing out of these dunes for a long time.
The hiking trail was a four and a half mile loop. The first part of the trail passed through dense vegetation along the banks of Sutton Creek. Then, at about the two and a half mile mark, the trail crossed into the mostly empty Sutton Creek Campground. We found ourselves a table and had a leisurely lunch. On the return leg the trail moved up to higher ground and crossed a large sandy area where the plant kingdom has not got much of a foothold. At least not yet. We were lucky with the weather and the whole length of the route was soft underfoot. A lovely hike.
Wednesday, April 12
E had a HEPAJ meeting today. They had lunch at a restaurant that everyone calls the Australian meat pie place. That name annoys E and before she went she called them to see if they had anything in the way of pies that weren’t meat filled. As it turned out, they did, and E enjoyed a nice vegetable korma pie.
Meanwhile, M took his truck in to the Nissan dealer to deal with a recall. At issue was a possibly malfunctioning parking pawl. A parking pawl is what prevents an automatic transmission vehicle from moving when you put it in Park. If the pawl does not engage properly, the car can just roll, roll, roll away, gently down the street. In the photo below the pawl is engaged. The driveshaft cannot rotate and thus the car’s wheels are not able to turn. As soon as a car is shifted out of Park, the pawl is pulled back and the shaft is free to turn. The part in the lower right corner is called the hand. Although not many people know this, there is actually a person inside your automatic transmission who uses a finger to move the pawl in and out. The work is stressful and it is not surprising that occasionally an intervention is required.
Thursay, April 13
Tertulia today with J and R, who have just returned from a tour around the Rhône region of France. They had a few days in Lyon, just a week or two after we did. They too had some troubles with disruptions due to protests over the issue of raising the retirement age in France from 62 to 64. Harumph.
E had two classes today–Laughter Yoga and Better Bones. M had no classes at all.
Friday, April 14
E needs a new wallet and wants it to be exactly like the old one. So off she went down to Eugene Leatherworks and ordered herself one. She’ll get the same color, size, shape and features as the old one, with a few little upgrades. It’s promised by August. Here’s the old one and the planned materials for its replacement.
:
E returned from Eugene in time for a meeting of the Lemon Meringue Pie Society. They met at A’s house, with E, H, T and L in attendance. The pie was delicious and a good time was had by all.
But the events of the day were not over. In the late afternoon a package arrived. Here’s what it contained–the newest member of our household.
Saturday, April 15
Nice day–mid fifties and lightly overcast. Also, chocolate croissants for breakfast! Then a hike in the OSU forest to check on the wildflowers. There were lots of trilliums around, but many were turning pink and drooping. The height of their season has passed. The fawn lily blossoms, on the other hand, have not quite arrived. We’ll need to check next week.
What we noticed most today were the yellow violets.
Sunday, April 16
M went out trucking in the rain today, messing around in the Coast Range, where there isn’t any snow. The plan was to go west on Hwy 20 to Burnt Woods, then south to Harlan, then farther south across the mountains to connect with the Falls Creek road and finally come out on Hwy 34 near the fish hatchery sign. It didn’t work out though. M came out onto 34 okay, but had drifted too far east to even come close to Falls Creek. Must try again sometime.
Harlan is more of a crossroads than a town, but the area is very pretty.
M’s route is up out of the valley into the mountains. The road goes on and on through a whole bunch of trees, which is somewhat monotonous. Also rainy.
Clear cuts make for a change of scenery.
And very occasionally, there’s a lake. M found this one high up in the middle of nowhere. Strange looking stubs in the water. Anyone know why are they’re shaped that way?
For our last few days in Spain we stayed with Lesley and Marciano at their house in Rivas. Lúa, Ke, and Buddy reside at the same address.
Lesley invited some of E’s old friends to lunch today, giving us a chance to see them one more time before we leave. The temperature was around 70, nice enough for a dinner outside. Lesley outdid herself with a multi-course banquet: fondue in a bread bowl, mushroom soup, Chinese vegetable salad, followed by the choice of salmon or cod in hollandaise. Then came two awesome desserts: brownies with a thick coconut topping–contributed by Margo–and Lesley’s fresh fruit pieces in port wine sauce over blueberry ice cream. Wow.
It was a shame that we only had half an hour to rush through this meal; we really should’ve planned better…Nah. Just kidding. We gave this meal the time it deserved–more than three hours.
Wondering about all those initials? Left to right: Paco, Margo, Marga, Lesley, Marciano and E. Photo by M.
Sunday March 26
We went to downtown Madrid today for some last minute details, including half a kilo of magical powder:
Monday March 27
Another nice day. We went for a walk through an old olive grove, and later on we grilled some halloumi cheese to help with the midday meal. Also, of course, we packed up the suitcases. We are really tired of packing.
Tuesday March 28
Marciano and Lesley got up early and got us to the airport by 4:00 AM so we could catch our 6:00 AM flight. Heroes both of them! By 8:30 we were in Amsterdam and by 10:30 we were on our way to Portland. The bad news was that our plane’s in-flight entertainment and wi-fi were both down. You can imagine the groans that greeted that announcement. In other areas the Delta/KLM service was wonderful, including the main meal, which was very tasty and healthy too.
We finally got back to our little house at around 4:00 PM, 21 hours door to door.
Wednesday March 29
When we arrived yesterday, Oregon seemed cold and damp; but the sun came out today, long enough to dry out the long grass in the back yard. M took the opportunity to break out the mower and go on the attack. Inside the house, both of us got back onto our computers as soon as we could. Besides being really tired of suitcases, we were super tired of small screens.
E took a walk and was happy to come across a new friend from the animal kingdom.
Thursday March 30
Cloudy today, but not raining. In the morning we worked on our taxes. In the afternoon we did some weeding and cleaning up outside. Jet lag is making us feel sluggish. We woke up at 3:00 AM wondering if it was time for breakfast.
Today marks the 4th wedding anniversary for the ANDEES. E sent them a gift of flowers, since an internet source said that flowers or fruit were the appropriate gift to signify the deeper blossoming and ripening of the relationship.
Friday March 31
Progress on the jet lag front: this morning we didn’t wake up till 4:00 AM. In the afternoon we took a forest walk and saw lots of Trillium and a few tiny yellow violets. Also we saw that the Indian plum is leafing out. It’s always the first. When we got home, we took a closer look at our two Indian plums, and sure enough, they have new leaves too–and blossoms.
We are reminded once again that spring starts early here but then seems to proceed very slowly. Besides the not very showy Indian plum blossoms, we have a few nice hyacinths and some long rows of daffodils, but these all look a little forlorn since so much else is just barely getting started and there’s a lot of brown around. It doesn’t help that the weather has turned dark and rainy and is predicted to stay that way for the next week or so. Of course there are buds everywhere and new red leaves have appeared on the roses. If we look closely we can see that the flowering currant is on the verge of flowering and that the forsythias are about to turn yellow.
Saturday April 1
It’s nice to be home of course. It’s comfortable and there’s an easing of tension. Certainly there is tension involved in traveling, especially when you’re older. But we kind of got used to it and now we miss it–at least a little. Today we were trying to figure out something about our finances and had to go over our credit card transactions for the last couple of months. It was so exciting to see all the transactions from the trip. Look, there’s the Senator Hotel. Remember that? And what was the Hungry Grill? Must have been in an airport. What was the 62 dollars at Puerta del Sol? Was it the purse? Remember the purse quest? Etc.
Our Visa cards are issued by our credit union. We used them a lot, but we were always a little nervous because they didn’t always work. E ended up calling the credit union twice to try and get them working again. This helped some but did not solve the problem completely. On our unexpected descent into the Lyon subway system, for example, we found that the ticket machines didn’t like our cards. The machines took cash, so it wasn’t a serious problem, but it was disconcerting. Has anyone else experienced such issues with credit cards in Europe?
One thing that worked well was Apple Pay/Apple Card. It was especially handy when used in combination with the Trainline app on the iPhone. Trainline makes it easy to arrange train travel in Europe. You just enter where you’re traveling from, where you want to go, and the date you want to travel. You then push a button and it gives you all the different train types along with all the possible departure and arrival times and all the prices. You choose what you want and then pay for the tickets by choosing Apple Pay and pressing one button on the phone. Then you’re done. Trainline sends you an e-ticket that you can show to the conductor when the time comes.
Of course Trainline is not that easy the first time you use it, because at that point you have to input all your basic information: name, address, email, age, passport number for everyone you are buying a ticket for. You can also enter any discounts you may qualify for. In our case, we got a Dorada (golden) card from the Spanish rail system, which provided a 40% senior discount on long distance tickets. Other EU countries honor the Spanish discount and Trainline remembers it all. Using Trainline costs $5.00 per ticket, but it’s worth it. (It should be noted that Trainline is not idiot proof, as M demonstrated on our trip to Granada, but we won’t go into that.)
Sunday April 2
Damp, gray, calm. There’s a bit more yellow on the forsythias.
On E’s birthday, we had one overriding objective: a visit to the Chocolatería San Ginés to have chocolate con churros. Here’s what that might look like:
The idea is to dip the long fried things into the thick chocolate.
First, though, we had to take care of a few other details, such as shopping for a birthday present. We took the Metro down to the heart of Madrid, where there are lots of stores, all quite convenient to the Chocolatería San Ginés. First we shopped for a purse. E is very particular about purses, so naturally we took a look at Hermes, Gucci, and Valentino. But E didn’t see anything she liked. For one thing, their purses didn’t have enough zipper pockets. So we went to the Corte Ingles, a well-known Spanish department store. And eventually she found the perfect thing. It didn’t cost $6,000, not even $600, more like $60. M was sort of disappointed, but he got over it. Then we went to the Apple Store and got E a new phone case. Here’s the loot:
Then it was time for lunch. We met our friends L and M as agreed, but the restaurant where we had planned on going had a huge line, so we set off for the Coffee Central de Jazz, which was more accessible.
No jazz going on in the afternoon, but a group called the Bobby Martínez Band were scheduled to play later that evening.
Finally it was time for the main event. We went to San Ginés Street, stood in line for 25 minutes or so, and finally were ushered down to a tiny table in the basement.
The San Ginés has a number of different serving rooms, which are all jammed with patrons, pretty much all the time. It’s insane.
Tuesday, February 28
(Before we continue, readers should be warned that another person whose name begins with M is about to appear. Which is ridiculous, but there you are and something must be done. We have been forced to amend our style book to allow the use of last name initials as well as first name initials. And Spanish women usually have two last names and hence three total initials, which is something to keep in mind. Ready? Okay, here we go.)
We’ve already mentioned one friend of Eve’s from her days in Chicago. She was the M who took us up to Leon for the day. In our new style, she will be referred to as MTC. Today we got to meet another old Chicago friend when MB drove over from Paris and stopped in to Madrid. MTC and MB have kept up their connection over the years, but E had not seen MB for 51 years. She was pleased to find that his sense of humor remained unchanged, and issued him an invitation to make a special appearance in the Laughter Yoga class in the future.
It was decided that the four of us would go together to the the town of Ávila for the day. We left at ten in the morning, traveling in MB’s hybrid SUV, a fine vehicle for such an expedition. The drive up took a little over an hour. Like most medieval cities, Ávila was a walled town. Unlike most similar cities, Ávila’s walls are intact and still surround the oldest part of the city. When we arrived, our first stop was the cathedral, which is of course inside the old city walls.
The sandstone from which the building was constructed has a lot of iron content, which creates a striking effect.
The cathedral also has its own line of yoyos.
We had our midday meal at a restaurant called Almacén, that had been recommended to MTC by a friend who has a house in Ávila. Almacén was a ways out of town on the highway leading to Salamanca and was barely noticeable if you were just driving by. But we found it.
At Almacén we had a view of the south walls of Ávila and also a long, slow, and very excellent meal. MB chose a rosé champagne to go with our starters and a twenty-one year old Tempranillo to go with our main course. Both were delicious.
On the way home from Ávila we stopped to see El Escorial, the largest renaissance building in the world. It was built by order of King Phillip the Second in the mid 16th Century, partly because he wanted a summer place where he could escape the intense heat of Madrid summers. Besides being a royal residence, the building also contains a monastery, a library, a museum, a basilica, a university, a school, and a hospital.
You can see a little bit of the Escorial behind these people…
….and here’s what distant Madrid looks like from there.
Wednesday, March 1
Among the presents that E got for her birthday were a couple of tickets to a special art exhibition at the Royal Palace of Madrid, and today was the day. Off we went, down into the Metro, emerging 40 minutes later at a stop just in front of the Madrid Opera House. The Royal Palace was just a short walk away. It’s a huge place and our first problem was to figure out where the heck the entrance was. Eventually we spied a large mass of people off in the distance and that, of course, was the place.
There were hundreds of people waiting to enter. Some were there for the art exhibition like us, but there were also many, many others who merely wished to tour the palace. Besides the building and the decor, visitors can see paintings by Caravaggio, Goya and Velasquez as well as frescos and museum collections of porcelain, watches, furniture, and weapons. Also on hand is a complete Stradivarius string quartet—two violins, cello and viola. Stradivarius gave the set to King Felipe V in 1702. E once took a tour of the Royal Palace and remembers that it was amazing.
As mentioned before, the Royal Palace is a big place, big enough to have its own cathedral at one end of the courtyard. Here’s a picture of that.
But we were there to see the art of Joaquin Sorolla, a Spanish painter who was born in Valencia in on 1863, on February 27, the same day as someone else we know. In addition to several dozen paintings, the special exhibit had three more parts: a detailed timeline of Sorolla’s life, a special projection room where his paintings were enhanced with animation and projected giant sized onto all four walls at once, and finally a virtual reality portion where we had to don a special headset with heavy binocular-like glasses. That part was unlike any experience we had had before. We were told that we could touch anything we saw except for green statues, because the green statues were actual people. E proceeded to try to grab several butterflies which eluded capture by turning into soap bubbles and floating away. Then she collided with a green statue which spoke with M’s voice. At that point we walked off a bridge and came back to reality. What would Sorolla have thought of all this?
A Walk on the Beach (1909) is perhaps Sorolla’s most famous painting and it was among the ones we saw. We also saw Sewing the Sail, 1896
Sorolla is especially noted for beautifully luminous colors. He liked to paint by the seaside and some of his most powerful works are of fishermen and their boats on the beach in Valencia. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Sorolla was extremely successful during his lifetime. One of Sorolla’s admirers was Archer Huntington of New York, who commissioned him to produce a series of large scale paintings to be installed at the Hispanic Society of America in New York. This series, called Visions of Spain, has become part of the permanent collection at the Society’s Library and Museum. To mark the 100th anniversary of Sorolla’s death, the Hispanic Society is just now collaborating with the National Arts Club to mount an exhibition about the creation of the Visions series. That exhibition will run until April 25th at the NAC.
Thursday, March 2
Were we ready for more high culture today? Nope. Had to do laundry and other household chores. Then at noon E went off to have a delicious lunch with MTC followed by a visit to MTC’s hairdresser. The results are quite attractive, but E needs to get used to the look before we publish a photo. M, meanwhile, took the subway four stops down to Mar de Cristal in search of allergy medicine. The stuff he likes is available in Spain under the brand name Alercina, but it seems that not every pharmacy stocks it. Mar de Cristal is a big shopping area and M was hoping to find it there. And even if he couldn’t find the medicine, he could have lunch at the kebab place.
Friday, March 3
Our first order of business today was to make train and hotel arrangements for a trip to Cordoba and Granada. That took three excruciating hours. Our first mistake was to try to buy train tickets online using the RENFE website. Aargh! So much data entry, so many choices among unfamiliar options. So many mysterious roadblocks. We could have rented a car! We could have flown! Why are we doing this at all? But we got there in the end, mostly because we abandoned the Renfe website and used Trainline instead. The train is considerably faster than driving and considerably cheaper than flying. The only flaw in our reservations is that we ended up with one leg of the journey where we won’t be sitting together—close, but not together. And what was our reward for all this work? We got to go grocery shopping.
Later in the day, around 4:30, we went down to our little shopping area on Añastra Street. E was in search of a pedicure. She had her eye on a nail shop that we had passed before and now she was ready to walk in and ask for an appointment. Such things can be really daunting in a foreign country, whether you speak the language or not. So in she went, while M loitered outside. She was able to get an appointment for 5:30 that very day. So we sat down to wait at a cafe, outside in the sun, and had tea. In the end all was well with the toenails.
Saturday, March 4
Today we went to look at more pictures, this time at the Reina Sofia Museum. The Reina Sofia specializes in 20th century art and has a large number of Surrealist and Cubist paintings and sculpture. They have a number of Picasso paintings and sculptures, quite a few Dalis, and bunch of other things including photos by Man Ray and this nice Yves Tanguy.
Belomancie 1, 1927
The most famous painting at the Reina Sofia is Picasso’s Guernica. It’s amazing. For one thing, it’s huge—12 feet high and 25 and half feet long. The subject is grim—the bombing of a Spanish town by German bombers during the Spanish Civil War—and execution is pure Picasso. People just stand there and stare at it till their feet get tired.
When our feet got tired we went into a small theater that was playing Luis Buñuel’s film The Golden Age. It’s a silent film in black and white and it’s really odd. The two of us were laughing, but everyone else in the room was meh. Guess you have to be old.
Of course there was more in the Reina Sofia than we had the strength to see, so at 2:00 we decided to head home and get some lunch at a place in our neighborhood. That sounded easy enough. We got onto the Metro, our trusty Line 1, which should have taken us almost all the way home. But instead, our journey came to a stop when the train reached a place called Cuatro Caminos. As the doors opened, we heard an announcement. Our train would not be going further and all passengers had to get off. No mention was made of what passengers might do once they got off. We decided to part ways with the Metro and headed for the surface. Once there, we were glad we did. Cuatro Caminos is an area of Madrid that Eve used to frequent and even after 40 years she recognized the area well enough. Though much had changed, it was nice to relive some memories. After a short stroll down a boulevard called Raimundo Fernandez Villaverde, we got a taxi, which took us to the restaurant that we had intended to go to in our own neighborhood.
It was 2:45 by then and El Rincón de Carlos was really hopping. The atmosphere was lively with lots of banter between the waiter/manager and the customers. One older woman told the waiter—in a voice loud enough to be heard by most of the customers—that she wanted the eggs stuffed with tuna for her first course and to make sure she got lots of tuna. The waiter replied, quick as a flash, that the stuffed eggs were already made and she would get them the way they were. This got a laugh from the crowd. After a moment, the waiter continued, saying “This is not a gas station, you can’t just fill it up as far as you want.” This got another laugh and throughout the exchange the old woman was grinning as if that was exactly the response she had hoped to get. And then of course E had to join in the banter. So it was a fun time, and the meal, though slowish, was very good. It seems to us that this would be a great neighborhood to live in for a year or two. We could get a real apartment and little car of some kind…
It was a beautiful springlike day at that point and walking home was a pleasure. One the way M finally got some pictures of our resident parrots. They are quite beautifully green, but they are also an invasive species whose numbers are growing rapidly all over Madrid.
The city government has a plan to deal with the problem, a plan which does not involve trapping them all and relocating them to some parrot paradise outside of town. No.
Sunday, March 5
Went out for Sunday breakfast to a bakery restaurant that we hadn’t tried before. They had tons of tempting stuff, more than we’ll ever get around to trying. E did fulfill her wish to have a palmera de mermelada de melocotón, a palm tree shaped pastry with peach jam. It lived up to her fond memory of it.
We can see that the weather is turning. Warmer and wetter, says the forecast. We felt a few drops on our way home from the bakery. Tomorrow we head south.
Today’s excursions were all on foot. We needed a few things to make our lives more complete and it was time to see if we could find them. In the morning we walked to a little shopping area about a half mile west of us. The weather was coldish, 40 degrees and windy, but the area we walked through was nice. Much of our route was along the street shown below, with its park-like center and widely separated lanes of traffic.
When we arrived, we found a pharmacy, a tobacconist, a couple of boutiques, three different bakeries, a nail shop, an herbalist, and an interesting looking little book store, which we did not go into for fear of losing our focus for the day. Instead, we went into the pharmacy and got some allergy medicine and sundry other things.
In the same area, there are also three different cafe/bar/restaurants. We decided that we should try one of them for lunch. At this point, however, it was only 11:45, which is way too early for lunch around these parts. So we took our purchases back home, rested a bit, and then went out again.
Of the three, we decided to try El Rincón de Carlos (Carlos’s Corner) for our first attempt at a local restaurant. We got there at 1:45, just in time to get a table before the rush. That was good because we saw as we entered that the place was quite small, with space for just six or seven tables. The daily lunch special, called the Menu del Día, consisted of two main courses, dessert and a drink: plato primero, plato segundo, postre, y bebida. There were four choices for the first course, four choices for the second and four choices for dessert. For us, just ordering was a laborious process. One difficulty was that the day’s options were written on a chalkboard in some kind of crazy all caps script that we found almost impossible to read. There was only one waiter, Carlos himself, and he was patient with us. The food was very good and was accompanied by a couple of crusty bread rolls and a bowl of awesome green olives. We had flan for dessert and that was awesome too. Besides the fact that the food was delicious and reasonably priced, E was super impressed that there was a table cloth, something hard to find in USA these days.
From outside, El Rincón de Carlos wasn’t all that attractive…
…but the lunch was good. E’s second course is in the foreground; M’s is behind.
Wednesday, February 8
Today we visited M and M, more of Eve’s dear friends whom she has known since the era when she lived in Spain during the seventies. The trip involved another train ride into the area northwest of the city. We’re getting better at this train business and this trip was a little more relaxed. M and M met us at the station and we immediately set off on a walk around the little town where they live. The Guardarrama River runs through the town and the site has a long history of settlement. We crossed the river on a modern foot bridge that was built immediately above the crumbling stone arches of a much older bridge.
The desire to see M and M was one of the main reasons we came to Spain at this time. It was quite wonderful to see them again.
Thursday, February 9
Today we went down to the oldest part of Madrid. There we met up with our friend M, who took us on a lunchtime tour of the area. We walked around through the narrow streets, sometimes treading on pavement first laid down centuries ago. Madrid was occupied by the Romans at one time, and later by the Arabs. We saw a section of wall dating from the twelfth century and passed through a place once known as La Puerta Cerrada, the main entrance to the city during the Muslim times that was shut tight each evening and not opened till morning. We also passed by an eatery called El Botín, which first opened in 1725 and which holds the Guinness world record as the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the world.
Our peregrinations were punctuated, of course, by stops at four different cafes featuring different sorts of treats. The first was a place called Alabardero; we don’t remember the rest exactly. This was partly due to the fact that each of the first three stops included a drink of some kind: first a small vermouth, then a small beer, and then a glass of wine.
Here’s the front part of Alabardero. If you go there, ask for the Vermut de Grifo, Vermouth on tap.The food was all good, but by the third stop we were getting full, so we decided to share just one serving of this over the top Spanish tortilla.
Friday, February 10
We went downtown again to day and had lunch with E’s friend Marga, who took us to a place called LasTortillas de Gabino. This was a definitely a higher class of food that we got from El Rincón. And they were pretty serious about tablecloths. Whenever a table was reset with a clean one, a waiter had to come out with an hot iron and smooth it down. Nice big iron, too. Anyway, our long, relaxed meal was amazing.
On a much more serious note, our walk from the Metro to the restaurant took us past the Turkish Embassy, where relief supplies were being collected to be sent to the areas affected by the earthquake.
That’s the Turkish flag in the upper left.
M took this picture the second time we passed by. At this point the boxes and bags were being loaded into a van, which presumably would deliver them to the airport.
Teams from Spain are in Turkey helping with rescue efforts. Spanish TV has some heartrending video.
Saturday, February 11
Lots of activity today, maybe too much. E has been on a quest for slippers and warmer pajamas. Spain has gone into energy conservation mode due to the effects of the Ukraine war and our building is heated no higher than 67 or 68. So off we went to a shopping center in the Mar de Cristal neighborhood, which is just four Metro stops away. It turned out to be just what we needed. There was a huge Carrefour hipermercado and a bunch of smaller stores. And of course there was a cafe where we could stop for a snack. This being Saturday, the Carrefour was jammed with shoppers. But the lines moved pretty quickly—we were in one of the quick checkout lanes—and it was amazing to see such a huge operation going full throttle.
Later on we did some food shopping closer to home and tried to rest up for our big evening adventure, which was going out to a movie in the downtown area. We met our friend M (there are lots of M’s in this story) who lives downtown and who had already gotten the tickets. We went to a large movie theatre called Verdi and saw The Fablemans. It was in English with Spanish subtitles and we all liked it a lot.
When we came out of the theatre at 9:30 pm, Madrid Saturday night was in full swing. There were lots of people on the streets and the cafes were crowded—both inside and outside, where people young and old were drinking, eating and talking all bundled up against the cold. We finally found a cafe with a free table indoors and did our share of the appropriate activities. M really wanted to take a video of the place, to catch the noise level, the very Spanish faces, all of the animation and the gesturing, the clothes and the hats, the serious expressions of the hardworking waiters. But that would have been a little too weird, even for M.
Sunday, February 12
We got home at 11:30 Saturday night, at which point our health apps had recorded more than 15,000 steps for the day. Sunday needed to involve a little less walking! Our biggest accomplishment for the day was doing a load of laundry, which is an all day affair. Although our apartment has a washing machine, drying is another story. It involves hanging things in the living room on a rack in front of the radiator, and then rotating them from time to time to hasten the process.
Aside from that, we ate three meals in and did our packing for our next outing. The plan is to pick up a rental car in the morning and drive north to the Pais Vasco, the Basque part of Spain. More on that next week, assuming we actually manage to do it.
Until then, we have this report on the canine situation, which has improved vastly since E’s times here in the 1970s. According to one of our local sources, there are more dogs than children in Madrid.
E found joy in the company of Buddy, a rescue dog adopted by friend L.
The first Pynchon book that I read was V. I still remember how enthralled I was with its exotic locations and explosion of ideas. What a wonderful book it was for a young man who was just starting to explore the world! I quickly sought out The Crying of Lot 49 and then Gravity’s Rainbow. A few years later I read all three of those again. Then Vineland. Then Mason & Dixon. Then Inherent Vice. Then Mason & Dixon again.
That’s a lot of Pynchon work, and as you may know, Pynchon work is hard. The novels are usually long and there are dozens of characters. The language is densely imagistic. The characters and their experiences are exotic; the stories are intense, filled with foreboding, danger and suspense. And though each story has conflict and narrative drive, the novel jumps from one semi self-contained episode to the next. Once one scene ends, the novel shifts to another, one with a different focus, set in a different time and place, possibly with a wildly different tone. They all seem to be related–very much so–but the relations are unclear and shifting. It’s hard to keep track.
But that’s because there is no track, or rather, there is and there isn’t. When a new episode begins, introducing an almost entirely new character with a new set of problems beginning in a time six years before the episode you just finished, it can be frustrating. You might ask “Why do I have to wade though this? What about my favorite character? What about the main story?” For example, at around page 400 of Gravity’s Rainbow Pynchon begins a 40-page section about a character named Franz Pokler, someone the reader hasn’t really met before and perhaps won’t ever see much of again. So, I’m thinking, “Oh god, here’s yet another digression. It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. I can’t stand it.” But the thing is, if you push ahead, you find out that Franz Pokler’s story is fascinating. Is it connected to other parts of the novel? Yes, but does that connection constitute it’s real importance? Not for Franz. For Franz, his story matters most. At this point in the novel, at this moment of reading, it becomes that way for the reader as well.
And as if the density and the discontinuity weren‘t enough, Pynchon occasionally interjects passages of closely described natural scenes that evoke strong emotional states but which make little reference to any characters at all. Are these hard to plow through? Oh yeah. On the other hand, Pynchon also throws some wild parties, filled with slap-stick drama, hair’s breadth escapes and trenchant dialog. Gravity’s Rainbow, especially, just explodes with voices.
In some novels it makes sense to speak of character development, to think about how a character’s complexity is revealed as the story progresses. The main protagonist in Gravity’s Rainbow, the person we are most likely to identify with, is Tyrone Slothrop. We hear a lot about him and we spend a lot of time seeing things from his point of view. We can’t help hoping that somehow things will come out well for him. But alas! Gravity’s Rainbow is actually a 760-page exegesis of how it is that Tyrone comes to be less and less present, less and less real. Tyrone gradually becomes a nebulous mist and fades away. Some readers might find that frustrating at first. I know I did. But then I came to understand it. Becoming less and less real is all any of us do, really. It’s kind of tragic, but also it’s hilarious.
I don’t often remember particular lines or passages from the books I read. But from Gravity’s Rainbow there are two things that have stayed with me from the very first reading. The first one is this:
Personal density is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth.
I take this to mean that the more you remember your past and the more you foresee of your future, the more substantial you are. We hear a lot about learning to live in the now, that all the rest is illusion and distraction. The suggestion is that living in the now is the pure essence of being. Pynchon reminds us, though, that purity is transparent. If you achieve it, there’s really no you there anymore. (Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.)
And then there’s this, which has been one of my prime operating principles ever since I first read it all those years ago:
Q: Then what about all the others? Boston? London? The ones who live in cities. Are those people real, or what?
A: Some are real, and some aren’t.
Q: Well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary?
A: It depends on what you have in mind.
Q: Shit, I don’t have anything in mind.
A: We do.
One reason I like this is that I’m pretty sure I don’t ultimately have anything in mind. In one sense, that’s my trouble.
