Alongside a Gibbous Orange Moon

The Statistics of Our Lives

2004-04-19T21:46:00.000-04:00

0 Number of National Park sites visited

1 Number of members of GNET not present for this trip

1 Number of tornadoes touching ground near us during this trip

1 Number of seapollies found during this vacation

1 Number of people who hazarded a guess as to the name of the only musical group or artist who was represented by more than one song on Nancy’s mix CD (Thanks, Tim Canny)

2 Number of state capitals driven through (Harrisburg and Richmond)

2 Number of live armadillos seen

2 Number of storms with winds exceeding 50mph experienced

2 Number of visual poets visited

2 Number of beaches visited

2 Number of Fryes visited during this trip

3 Number of Prescotts visited during this trip

3 Number of members of GNET on this trip

3 Number of National Park sites we drove by the exits for on our last day of driving

3.5 Number of pounds of glyphstones collected

4 Number of books received of Carlos Luis

4 Number of postcards actually bought

4 Number of postcards picked up for free

4.75 Highest number of hours driven in a row by a single person (Nancy on 17 April)

5 Number of Grants visited during this trip

5 Approximate number of songs by Bruce Nye, The Elvis Guys, we listened to

5 Number of hours it took to drive from Englewood to Florida’s border with Georgia

7 Day of the month this blog and vacation began

8 Number of states “visited”

10 Lowest number of blog hits recorded in a single day (10 April, a Sunday, and last day of traveling)

12 Number of days during which any “vacationing” occurred

13 Number of blog entries posted

17 Number of hardcopy postcards mailed during this vacation

17 Total number of comments left on the blog (Come on, people! You weren’t even trying!)

18 Day of the month this vacation ended

19 Day of the month this blog ended

22.5 Number of hours it took to drive to Florida

23 Estimated number of clams saved on Manasota Beach by Nancy on 16 April

24 Number of hours it took to drive back from Florida

28 Number of sandglyphs created on the first day of sandglyphing

35 Number of clams saved on Manasota Beach by Geof on 16 April

48 Highest number of blog hits recorded in a single day (9 April, 1st day of counting)

89 Highest speed reached during our driving

92 Number of books received of Bob Grumman

99 pdqb publication number for this weblog

155 Number of clams saved on Manasota Beach by Tim on 16 April (the record)

487.2 Number of miles driven by Geof from Englewood to Miami and back

544.2 Number of miles driven by Geof without his family

690 Number of dollars it cost to board three dachshunds during this vacation!

985.8 Highest number of miles driven by the Huths in a single day ever (985.8)

2,854.6 Total miles used to drive to Florida and back

3,398.8 Total miles put on the family car during this entire trip

Unused sign of the day from April 14th:

Don’t Overlook the Obvious (one side)

Ignore Message on Other Side (on other side)

(Yes, America, conceptual writing is alive and well.)

The Last Hail, Wind, and Rain Show

2004-04-18T23:09:00.000-04:00

Central Parkway, Schenectady, New York

We had the luxury today of awaking at 7 am. That probably didn’t allow us enough time for sleep, but it was a good start. We did have a chance today to chat with Betsy, Steve and Shannon, and to tour their beautiful house, so this morning was a little relaxing.

But that beginning to the day belied the reality of our day.

The last day of a road trip is the worst because there’s no point to it except to get home. The struggle back towards home seems all the longer because that is our only goal for the day.

Our day’s trip started well. Traffic was smooth, and the weather was clear. We passed into Maryland, into Pennsylvania, past Gettysburg. But we’d forgotten we’d be driving on I-81, that most unforgiving of highways, because it is always under construction. We decided to take I-81 to I-88 today because I didn’t want to stop multiple times to pay tolls on I-95 and I-90. We would have had to have stopped since EZ-Pass doesn’t work with our van for reasons EZ-Pass cannot explain or solve. So we took I-81, and it all went well for the first 90 seconds or so.

Then, just outside of Harrisburg, we came to a stop and wasted at least a half an hour to go a few miles. The cause of our delay was merely that we were in a work zone. No-one was working there, but still I-81 had the power bring us to an almost complete stop. Eventually, we all escaped from that bottleneck, but everyone was anxious to move by this time, so driving became a bit more treacherous for us.

The rest of Pennsylvania was unremarkable, but as soon as we crossed the border into New York the grainy sky grew darker, and the winds pummeled our van. Nancy guided the van through rough waves of wind, but once the rain began to pour down in 50-mph winds and the hail started we did something we never do. We exited the highway (at Bainbridge) and waited a few minutes for the storm to subside.

Once back home, we unpacked, listened to our messages (most were from a kid dialing a wrong number over and over again), thumbed thru our mail, and began to put our things away. Our Manx was a little shy with us at first, so we didn’t see him for a few minutes. Tim and I left to retrieve from the kennel our three dachshunds, who were excited to see us.

Erin, the one of us not on this trip, had the big news of the day. She had to follow a friend to director Peter Bogdanovich’s house to feed his cat last night. Erin didn’t meet Bogdanovich, of course, but she met his cat, who was very nice but kept head-butting her in the stomach.

Remember: there will be one last blog entry for this trip tomorrow: the traditional list of trip statistics!

Spring Peepers, Toads, and the Coming of the Locusts

2004-04-17T23:52:00.000-04:00

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

There is one hour of the day that I never want to be awake, a time I think is too late to still be up and too early to be waking up. I call it 4 am. That is the time we awoke today.

And before five, in the dark of a remarkably cold Floridian morning, we were on the road. For at least an hour, all we saw was black as we drove north, but eventually the whole sky turned a subtle yet dark grey. Then a glow appeared on the eastern side of us, which grew into a fulgurating sun holding fast to the horizon. (And Florida is virtually all horizon.) A fingernail paring of a moon appeared low in the sky, and we stopped at a rest area. Walking through a cold and dreamy twilight, we entered the restrooms.

When we exited, two or three minutes later, it was full morning. The sun reigned over us once more.

We drove. It took five hours to make it out of Florida, and we had four more states to go. Nancy drove fewer shifts than I did today but longer ones. She ended up driving three minutes shy of nine hours.

It takes a long time to drive this far.

The day was clear and easy. We drove through Georgia without any trouble. Then, after we crossed the river into South Carolina, the road narrowed to two lanes heading in each direction. Traffic slowed and accidents popped up in the Carolinas, slowing us down, even tho a vehicle never blocked the roadway. We passed four accidents, losing time in the process.

By the time we reached Virginia, we thought the trip couldn’t end, but Virginia stretches on interminably. We hit northern Virginia, even about thirty miles out from the Beltway, and the road was dark save for the headlights and taillights of thousands of cars. Occasionally, traffic slowed almost to a stop, but we continued, we made our exits, we paid our 50-cent toll, we took the Wolf Trap exit, and we found ourselves once again in the dark woods and twisting and dipping roads of my sister-in-law’s neighborhood.

The trip took us 16 hours and 23 minutes today, almost an hour and a half more than the trip down to Florida. Maybe it was that extra mile and an eighth we drove today—making today, officially, our longest day-long drive ever: 985.8 miles.

At least we arrived early enough that our niece Shannon was still awake. We stored our carry-in luggage, talked a little, and watched the end of the movie Finding Nemo.

Betsy and Steve now await the return of the big brood of seventeen-year locusts, which return to the DC area this year. I was living in Washington, DC, not for the last awakening, but for the one before that. Our trees, our lawn, every bush, the sidewalks were almost completely covered with an orange-brown humming mass of locusts. I couldn’t walk the streets without killing scores of them. It was one of the most amazing instances of thronging animal life I had ever experienced, greater I think in some ways that the termite storms of my Ghanaian childhood.

The woods around here thrummed with spring peepers. A lovely sound, it means spring has arrived—at least to Virginia. Tim went outside tonight to catch toads. Four of them were resting on the pool cover—imagining that the quarter-inch of water trapped atop the plastic sheeting was a pond. When I went out with Tim, one of the toads was chirping vibrantly and romantically, and we shone the light on him and saw his throat puffed out into a tight ball beneath his jaw as he called to the other three toads on the plastic. When Tim caught the toad, it chirped a small musical chirp—something touchingly plaintive and quiet—asking for release.

Tim quickly let him return to the wild, where he sat solemnly on the blue sheeting awaiting his chance to continue his race.

Quote of the Day (Tim): It used to be that he did that for the Huthodex, but he hasn’t done that for a long time.

(Whatever that means.)

Sign of the Day: Floyd’s Love Nest

(Get this: the name of a daycare center.)

Good-bye, Jacaranda. So Long, Alamander

2004-04-16T23:03:00.000-04:00

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

Around this part of Florida, there is a certain tree called a jacaranda, and it shares a name with a street nearby. I cannot identify this tree, but yesterday I did see one nearly leafless tree that was covered with purple flowers, and it turned out to be a jacaranda. That name is but one of the interesting ones for streets here; another is “Alamander.” We say good-bye to both of those sometime early tomorrow morning.

I had to arise early (8 am!) to get a little work done today before we had to leave for Punta Gorda. I’m rarely clear on what any of our plans have been since we’ve arrived here, so on the way to Punta Gorda today I asked where we were going. And we were headed for a place called Fisherman’s Village. What it turned out to be was a covered but open-air mall with a bunch of little tourist shops. We wandered through a couple of shops before having a good lunch at the restaurant at the end of the pier.

Part of Punta Gorda, tho, reminded us of Key West. Quaint old Sears houses lining the streets, fenced yards, and cats everywhere: walking the mall, sleeping in the bushes. Well, it may have been a particularly catful day.

Once back home, Nancy Tim and I returned to Manasota Beach to search for glyphshells. The beach was deep with shells when we arrived and we collected pounds of them before returning home. We also collected a number of shark’s teeth and things that Nancy called “pretty shells,” but I wasn’t sure of the purpose of them.

Again, we returned home, only to shower and leave again for dinner. (It seems that meals make up most of any vacation, which always seems a waste to me. I don’t mind eating, but meals took up much of our time here.) We ate dinner at a nearishby restaurant called Johnny Leverocks, getting there in time for the early bird specials. Good food, and I finally had some key lime pie.

Then we had to rush home so we could make it to the evening festivities at Polynesian Village. First, we had to say good-bye to the Grants, who are also leaving early tomorrow morning. And all three Grant girls had to chase Tim around a little bit. Here, Tim is the life of the party.

Our entertainment tonight was Bruce Nye, The Elvis Guy, whose banner proclaims, “I Swear It’s Elvis.” (I thought it interesting that being an impersonator was not enough appropriation of another persona for him; he also had to steal the name of Bill Nye, the Science Guy.) As expected he was a Vegas Elvis (also known as a Fat Elvis), because that’s such an easy persona to fit into: slip into a costume and the parody is ready. I don’t care for Elvis impersonators, but he did tell a number of jokes (tho only I laughed at the one below), and he got the women of PV to wiggle in front of everyone. We couldn’t stay for the whole two-hour show, since we had to pack.

So we packed and stowed our belonging, and we’re set to hit the road at 5 am tomorrow for a 15-hour ride to Virginia. Tomorrow is the kind of day I dread.

So, Betsy, expect us around 8 pm on Sunday.

Good night.

Quote of the Day (Bruce Nye, the Elvis Guy): I don’t see many old people here tonight.

Sign of the Day:

Grease Money
Biziness is Good
You Can Make it Gooder

Breakfast with Don, Dinner with the Grants

2004-04-15T23:56:00.000-04:00

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

We did three things today: 1. Watched breakfast on TV; 2. Went to the beach; and 3. Had dinner at that the Myakka River Oyster Bar.

We were supposed to wake up in time to attend a coffee this morning at the recreation center, and I did indeed wake up in time to see it on closed-circuit TV (channel 15 here in Polynesian Village). Nancy woke up a little later than I did and missed some of the good stuff. When the image came on the screen, I saw Mr Mike’s back walking away from the camera. Suddenly, women started moving around just off camera—occasionally coming into view—and one ran to the end of the room and picked up an armful of paper towels and ran back to the scene of the coffee spilled—which I could imagine but couldn’t quite see. Right after this, Mrs Mike came on screen and said the first words I could pick out of the ambient sounds the microphone picked up—but those words are the quote of the day, so see below. The rest of the breakfast consisted of announcements (including many requests for charity work: blood donation, collecting material to help others) and jokes, one of particularly questionable cultural sensitivity.

After the Mikes returned (minutes after the end of that narrowcast), Nancy and Mr Mike left for a walk on Manasota Beach. When they returned, Nancy presented me with a handful of the most wonderful pieces of the world, which she called shellglyphs. Each was a single lid of a bivalve into which had been cut (by what, we do not know—a burrowing seaworm?) channels that often represented or nearly represented a recognizable symbol: a C, a Y, an arrow. Sometime, I’ll put these to good use.

Later in the day, after I finished some reading and reporting for work, we left for Venice’s Nikomis Beach. The day was too windy and the sea was a cold and muddy churning, so only Tim did any swimming. The beach had two weird features, which are somehow one. The end of the beach by the Venice jetty had almost no real sand near the water; the “sand” consisted of shells of various sizes, but none so small as to make them grains. And the beach was covered about four inches deep with a thick, prickly seaweed covered with little brown berries. I had never seen anything like it. Nancy and I searched for shellglyphs, but had little luck. Tim and I designed sandglyphs farther up the beach where there was some real sand.

In the evening, we went out to dinner, meeting up with the Grants (that’s Aunt Joan, her son Peter, his wife Beth, and the three girls: Suzanne, Caroline, and Sophie). We had a good time, especially since the girls (12 down to 4 years in age) are so cute. Sophie, once again, expressed her love for Tim by sitting by him all the time, giving him hugs, and yelling out who he was going to marry. Unfortunately, she could only imagine people at the table as future spouses for Tim, so that usually meant his second cousin Suzanne, but sometimes it was his mother, his father—and once, at the very end, and quietly, it was Sophie herself.

Quote of the Day (Mrs Mike on “Breakfast with Don”): You’ve gotta focus on Polly, Don. She just spilled her coffee.

Sign of the Day (on Polynesian Village Channel 15): Fruit Tree Owners / You must pick up your fruit or we will have to charge you

Tabby Road

2004-04-14T23:53:00.000-04:00

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

First, a recounting of the events that took place during my absence from the Gulf Coast yesterday: Nancy bought sandals for Tim (his huge feet outgrew his old ones), Tim went to the beach with the Grants, Nancy rode her bike around this circular “park”—and Nancy, Tim, and the Mikes went to dinner at a Chinese buffet. As you can see, life is just as exciting when I’m not around.

The most memorable part of my day occurred at the beginning. While waiting impatiently at the reception desk at the celebrated Terrace Inn in Coral Gables, Florida, I noticed that a woman had moved towards the breakfast table and removed five of the six remaining bagels for her own use. By the time I got in line behind her, the final bagel was still there, but she snatched it up, saying to the woman next to her, “Para mí familia.” Maybe, maybe not, but this gave Bob Grumman plenty to complain about as we drove back across the state.

I arrived home to discovere that Nancy, Tim, and Mr Mike were heading out for a walk to and on the beach. I quickly changed my clothes, and we headed out into the cool windy day. We took a back road to the beach, and it was covered studded with shells, making the road resemble the rough tabby once used to build simple homes in the ocean southeast. Later, we crossed over the Intracoastal Waterway on the Manasota Island drawbridge, providing us a beautiful view of brown pelicans in flight. We then walked on a boardwalk that curves around a small inlet on the island. There we saw mangrove roots covered with oysters and drooping towards, but not quite touching, the water.

Only two families decided to set up umbrellas and chairs on the beach and pretend today was a nice day for sunbathing. (They paid for their vacation, so they were going to enjoy it whether that was possible or not.) The waves off the gulf were tall and wild today, and wind-whipped sand stung our legs on our walk. Mr Mike and Nancy searched for sharks’ teeth, and Tim and I carved and photographed sandglyphs in the moist but solid sand.

After dinner, we went to Venice, where we saw the Venice Municipal Airport—now famous for (unintentionally) having trained a number of terrorists how to crash jet liners into the Twin Towers. But our goal was the Venice jetty, a strip of asphalt laid upon a base of rough-hewn rock and leading out into what was today a wild sea. We came for the sunset but arrived during those few minutes just after sunset when the sun still illuminates the world from beyond the horizon. Nancy, Tim, and I walked out onto the jetty, ignoring the spray until it actually hit us. We ran towards the end of the jetty then away, trying to time our arrival at the very end so that we hit a dry spell between huge splashes.

The cold wind, the sea spray, and the adventure made this the best part of the day. Laughing, we walked back to shore.

Signs of the day (with a few yards of one another):

Exotic Handmade Pottery
BASKETVIL

XTC
Adult
Superstore

Quote of the day (Nancy): Your hognose bellybutton is a hernia?

Away from Home and Family

2004-04-13T23:54:00.000-04:00

Terrace Inn, Coral Gables, Florida, Room 228

Today, I left my family.

It couldn’t be helped. I had to go to Miami Beach to see the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry. It is one of my favorite places on the planet, and I needed to do some research there.

I left the Mikes’ home today in a rush, such a rush that I cannot remember if I actually hugged and kissed Nancy good-bye. At Nancy’s insistence, I did wake up Tim, asleep on the sofa-bed, and give him a hug. Then I drove away, but during my trip to Bob Grumman's a certain traveling theme song of my family's (the equivalent of the National Lampoon's Vacation theme for the Griswolds) came on the radio: Tom Cochrane's, “Life is a Highway." In a mood a little perkier, I picked up famed visual poet Bob Grumman at his home, and we continued across the state to the quaint island nation (or nation of islands) that we call Miami Beach. There we spent a few good hours chatting with the Sackners about visual poetry, learning about their new acquisitions, touring their beautiful home filled with all kinds of verbo-visual art, and doing some research on visual poetry. We had a wonderful time. My only regret was that it was so short. I could easily stay there for weeks and not run out of books to read and art to reflect on.

But we had to go to dinner at the home of Cuban-American visual poet Carlos M. Luis and his wife Martha, who appeared to be competing with the Sackners for the honor of most gracious hosts. We had a long talk with Carlos about his work in the field of visual poetry, we all exchanged publications of ours. Carlos presented us with a few fine books of his visual poetry, and he gave each of us an original visual poem of our own choosing. I found so many of his visual poems beautiful that it took me at least ten minutes to decide on one.

Martha made a delicious dinner that didn’t seem to end. We began with a selection of cheeses, crackers, olives, and apple slices (coated with lemon juice to keep them from going brown, but this gave them something of the flavor of rosewater). For dinner, we had a green salad with tomatoes and just the right insouciant dressing, the best arroz con pollo I’ve ever had (and I’ve had it plenty of times) garnished with asparagus, and fried plantains that were sweet and tasty. Martha kindly made me fresh carrot juice, and we had wine, a guayabera dessert, and sweet Cuban espresso. After a long day without food, this was the best meal we could have hoped for.

We talked to Carlos and Martha about their careers in the airlines and publishing and teaching. About their children and grandchildren. About the art that covered the walls of their beautiful home. About their many travels and many homes.

And at the end of it all they encouraged us to find a hotel room for the night, so that is how we find ourselves tonight in Coral Gables, Florida.

And what happened with my family today? I’ve no idea. I miss them.

Tomorrow, we’ll find out what they did.

Stormy Weather from the Bungalow

2004-04-12T23:52:00.000-04:00

Overnight, huge storms roared around us, throwing thunder, rain, and lightning upon us. The noise and light occasionally woke me, and I would shift position or watch the curtains light up.

This morning, the storms continued, so we spent the day indoors. At times, the storms were dramatic, and the giant shagbark pine across the street would sway ominously. Nancy would stand on the front porch as close to the tree as possible at such times and tell me about the damage the tree could cause to the house. I told her to come inside a few times, but she stood there transfixed. She loves to watch storms.

We spent the day working on various separate projects. Nancy read an entire book that would have taken me a week to read. I prepared for my trip to Miami tomorrow and did some reading for work. Tim and his grandfather went to see a movie. After Tim returned, his second cousin Sophie called him three times and talked about his going over to their house, but she never really invited him over. (But what do you expect from four-year-olds?)

Not much of a day. It was the kind of day in Florida where everyone feels the weather has stolen their vacation.

Quotes of the Day (Differing Reviews of the Movie Hellboy):

Tim: Good.

Mr Mike: ~Different~.

Sign of the Day: Losing power three times.

The Easter Hippopotamus Follows Us to Florida

2004-04-11T23:55:00.000-04:00

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

Actually, there is no Easter Hippopotamus. It is just something my father-in-law made up today. There is, however, an Easter Bunny and a Birthday Hippopotamus. The latter is the source of any birthday presents that no-one else seems to have given a child. Anyway, magically, Tim woke up today to find he had received an Easter basket. We kept the Bunny informed and he found his way down here somehow. (I did notice, tho, that a lot of beers were missing from the refrigerator this morning, so he must have been quite thirsty working in this mild heat.)

My daughter Erin called today and proved that she is still quite ill. So ill that the family she is visiting in New Jersey left her at home alone while they went to Mass. Her vacation is to read about ours.

The big adventure today was my trip to Port Charlotte to see one of the most famous living American visual poets, Bob Grumman. (Okay, no jokes: visual poets know you don’t know who they are.) Bob and I had a little work to do related to a book he’s publishing and a project I’m working on, so I reviewed his collection of books and borrowed a few of them. Bob’s house is a maze dedicated to a life of books. He’s blocked two large windows to set up shelving, which he fills with the books he’s published. One bedroom is just a mazelike library of filing cabinets and shelving. And he stores an otherwise abandoned car in a carport, so he can use it to store books and manuscripts. As a records professional, I had to explain to him that none of his storage solutions were the best. But he claimed that storing records outside in the car was his highest quality storage he had. Some days, being an archivist doesn’t even help. Bob did take the time to show me a few beautiful large-scale visual poems he’d produced, including this one, which is enormously more beautiful in person.

But the big part of the day was the Easter potluck dinner at Polynesian Village’s recreation center.

What I didn’t understand was why we had to arrive at 4 pm for a dinner that didn’t start until 5. (Later, I learned that the room gets so crowded—despite reserved seating—that it would be difficult to make it to your seat if you arrive late.) Our table was almost entirely family: 12 people altogether, and 11 from the same family. So that was great. But I ended up having to make room for people, so I sat at the foot of the table. I say “foot” rather than “head” because I was sitting at the card-table extension to the main table with Tim and Sophie. Now, Tim (14) is my son and Sophie (4½) is the cutest and sweetest little girl—but our conversations were not in the stratosphere: “Don’t poke your sister.” “You have butter on your cheeks.” “Tim, do you see any superdweebnoughts around here?”

The greatest part of the meal, tho, had to be the golf. Apparently, there was some kind of tournament going on today, so the people in power turned on the big TV behind me on. Now, I am no sports fan, but golf has to be the most boring sport in the world (“a good walk, ruined,” according to Mark Twain). But I thought, Hey, I’ve got my back to the TV, so I don’t have to watch it. What I didn’t count on was that so many other people in the room would be watching golf through me. I mean, I was sitting in front of the TV. As I put food in my mouth and chewed, as I dropped food, as I took a drink, I was blocking people’s view of the TV.

The food was okay: basic American food, so Timmy had no idea what it was. “What are deviled eggs?” he asked me. “What are scalloped potatoes?” (He also asked if he had to eat ham, but that’s because he knew what ham was.) Tim would’ve been able to recognize the foods better if they were normal foods: feijoada, caldo verde, salade huthoise (okay, it’s usually salade niçoise), four-bean southwestern stew, ostrich burgers, octopus, sauerbraten with spaetzle, sweetfish and catpotatoes. You know, regular food.

The best part of our meal, tho, was the hat contest. Mostly women, but also one man and one little girl, paraded around the hall before dinner, showing off their beautiful, funny, or unusual hats. One of the judges was Tim’s second cousin Suzanne Grant, who took her assignment quite seriously. But she also chose the wrong funny hat—the funny one was the one that made Sophie laugh right away! (There is another Grant girl—Caroline—but she was at the head of the table, about 20 yards from me. We didn’t get a chance to speak.)

After dinner and dessert, Tim returned to the house. He wasn’t feeling well because of too much exposure to the sun, too little exposure to sunblock, and too many unintentional swigs of seawater. I followed soon after, getting out of the way of those watching golf, but I’d forgotten about the hat competition. I missed the awards ceremony, so I can’t report on the winners.

As I walked back to the house, I noticed that some people had opted out of attending the festivities today, for whatever reason. I considered them my brothers.

Well, except some of them were women.

Quotation of the Day (Mrs Mike—in her element, standing up to get a better view during the parade of hats—to Nancy):

When I was your age, I’d think the same thing, but this is great!

(I don’t actually think Nancy made any relevant comments immediately previous to this statement, but who knows what expressions she may have made.)

Sun Setting in the Gulf of Mexico

2004-04-10T23:52:00.000-04:00

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

I broke down today and followed some vacation protocols.

First, Tim and I went swimming in the pool with our cousins. Almost everyone played pool baseball, a seriously simplified version of the land version of the game, while I swam laps between them. Afterwards, we held a couple of swimming races, both of which I won. But I have to admit that most of my competitors were under fifteen years old. Still, we had fun. We haven’t seen the Grant girls in quite a while, and they were cute and full of personality (personalities).

The weirdest point of the day was when my daughter Erin called to talk about her life at school and to discuss details about her fall semester (which will take place in Dublin, Ireland). At one point, I tried to tell her something that had happened yesterday, but she stopped me, explaining that she’d read it on the blog. I wonder if blogging is the best way to communicate with one’s children.

In the afternoon, Tim went with the Grants to the beach, and they stayed there, playing, for hours. When he returned, his entire body was white, except for his even brighter red neck. I think he forgot to put sunblock on the back of his neck this time. So we now call him a redneck. (Which reminds me of an interesting lexicographic tidbit. In Barbados, rednecks are called redlegs, apparently because they walk around in shorts all day. A redleg, of course, has to be a member of the minority white population.)

After Tim’s return, we went out to dinner to Mad Sam’s, off on a key but still in Englewood and with a good view of the water. The dinner was reasonably good and plenteous in the way American meals always are. We watched a giant brown pelican (the national bird of Barbados, by the way) plunge headlong and furiously towards the water only so it could sit down. And we listened to Tim’s best memory trick: recounting meals we had had at different restaurants.

It is always wonderful to find out what strange scraps of information different people keep in their minds, but I was not ready for my own son to tell us exactly what he had had for dinner at particular restaurants up to two years ago. And he didn’t just know what he had for dinner; he also remembered what the rest of us had ordered. For instance, at the Knickerbocker Grill in Greenwich Village in August of 2002, on the day we dropped Erin off at college for the first time, Tim reports that he had crispy duck breast (duck is a favorite food of his), I had branzini (which Tim reminds me is a fish dish that comes complete with head and tail, yet is missing its eyes), Nancy had tuna steaks with blue potatoes (he remembers the type of potatoes!?), and Erin had raviolini (but she didn’t eat any because she was so sad about being left off at college—a sadness that reached deep into her second day at college before disappearing altogether and for good).

After dinner, four of us went to Manasota Beach to watch the sun set. When I first saw the sun, I wondered why it was no longer gibbous—before realizing that moon is that occasionally gibbous object in the sky. Nancy and Mr Mike watched the sun set and chatted. Tim and I skipped shells on the surface of approaching waves (a skill I honed when Lake Erie was literally in my backyard), and I ended up drawing little glyphs in the sand and watching the waves wash them away.

This was a good day. All I have to do now is read the large packet of work that arrived via UPS for me today.

Quote of the Day (Geof to Tim, talking about the mockingbirds outside):

Why are you reading the book if you’re not learning how to kill them?

Sign of the Day (at the entrance to Polynesian Village):

HEAR IT
SEE IT
REPORT IT

Once More to the Armadillo

2004-04-09T23:39:00.000-04:00

Okay, I’m not really built for vacations. Relaxation only makes me nervous. If I’m not doing something, I’m thinking about what I’m not accomplishing. Also, I wasn’t ready for this vacation, because I have too much work to do at the office.

That’s a warning that this day’s events might not sound exciting, but events will improve as the days of vacation increase in number.

We are staying at my in-laws’ double-wide in Polynesian Village, but I can’t tell it’s a double-wide. It looks like a modest but more than adequate house. This is the beginning of Floridian summer, so people keep their windows open and the world is moderately humid and warm. We live in upstate New York in a home without air conditioning, so these temperatures are like any mild summer day to us.

Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep well last night. Nancy is still sick with whatever it was that made Tim sick. (I’m immune to whatever illness my family contracts, tho I’ve no idea why.) And she awoke, coughing, many times during the night. Each time, I also awoke, disrupting my usually deep sleep. I ended up having mild nightmares in which something ominous was about to happen, but I never knew what and the event never took place, yet the experience remained unsettling.

So I slept in a little—late enough for my in-laws to say, “Good afternoon,” to me when I awoke, but that means anytime after 7 am. Almost immediately after awaking, I was sitting on the porch, chatting with the Mikes when a visitor arrived. (I call my in-laws’ “the Mikes” for obvious reasons: it isn’t “Mom and Dad” and it isn’t their real names, so I don’t feel uncomfortable using it to refer to them.) Our visitor was Garnet Dirr, a nice lady from Indiana, who chatted with us for a while. There I was, unwashed, unshaven (for two days), wearing glasses. The only positive development was that it no longer mattered that I hadn’t combed my hair.

During our conversation, Nancy and I heard the quiet voice of a cat somewhere, but we couldn’t find the cat. Later, we learned this was because we had heard the call of a catbird. At one point, a giant white egret swooped thru the neighborhood, flying low between two houses across the street from us.

I spent a good part of the day catching up on work, including a small report I needed to distribute today. Then I wrote and posted the blog for yesterday and relaxed a little. Everyone else went to the beach, returning in a couple of hours with a handful of shark’s teeth and a few shells.

As a service to the family, I made a simple teriyaki salmon with rice for dinner, which turned out just right for once. After dinner, Nancy, Tim and I bicycled around this peaceful complex (built, like Dante’s Hell, on the concept of concentric circles) and visited with Nancy’s Aunt Joan (who, strangely enough, lives about a block from her sister).

We also discovered today that Joan’s son Peter and his family were coming today. They arrived after ten (about when we did last night), and we showed up in time to help them unpack. We stayed for a while having fun talking to everyone, including the two smallest girls (Caroline and Sophie) who were a bit wound up after a seventeen-hour drive.

Earlier in the evening, Tim and I drove out to the entrance to the park in search of the armadillo we found yesterday. We drove our bikes off the road and onto the grass, with our lights cutting a path into the night, when suddenly we found a pair of armadillos before us. We stopped about five feet from them, enjoying the pleasure of seeing these weird beasts, something like armored opossums. After about a minute, one of the armadillos noticed we were standing there shining lights on them and it bolted around us (missing me by about a foot) and crashed into the woods, causing a terrible ruckus for such a small animal.

The other armadillo continued to nuzzle the ground, unperturbed. After a while, it stood on its hind legs, sniffing the air, so we figured this was the same armadillo we saw yesterday. We turned quietly and rode away, leaving him to smell the dark.

Sign of the Day: Congradulations Greg on Your GED

Quote of the Day (Geof to Tim, who was looking for a bug in Aunt Joan’s kitchen drawers): Tim, we’ve got food at home!

The Continental Rut Takes Us to Armadillo

2004-04-09T13:45:00.000-04:00

The Mikes’, North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

So back to yesterday: April 8th.

There is no reasonable way to accurately recount a fifteen-hour, thousand-mile road trip, the main feature of which has to be tedium. Instead, we’ll present a few impressions, barely held together by a thread of thought.

Waking at 6 am was quite a treat after only a few hours of sleep, but we couldn’t delay. We had a brief breakfast, chatted with Betsy and Steve, and even had the opportunity to talk to and play with five-year-old Shannon as well. But we had to leave, so we started out (a little late) at 7:20.

Betsy and Steve live in a wooded development that hasn’t flattened the landscape into uniformity. The roads thru the woods dip and swerve following the contours of the land—all of which is more pleasant in the morning than during the dark of night. Wolf Trap is in the same neighborhood. The world is peaceful here, but it isn’t the real world. The real world is the Beltway, and we made it there in only a few minutes, moving from 15 to 65 miles per hour in the same amount of time. Our fear was that the famed “Mixing Bowl”—where competing arms of the highway fold into and over one another, where flat roads and vaulting overpasses meet construction—would slow us way down. But we timed our arrival just right, and we were delayed only about five minutes, without ever coming to a complete stop.

Then we were on I-95, that unfabled strip of interstate highway that I call the Continental Rut. Heavy traffic streams over it continually, moving us north and south. Today’s travel was punctuated by occasional but fairly frequent instances of truck tires blowing. The broken pieces of huge truck tires littered the highway. A couple of times, we needed to change position to avoid flying debris. Once a huge strip of rubber was floating high in the air, just about even with the top of the truck and flipping over slowly in the air, everything so slow you’d think we’d slowed down a videotape. Usually, we merely swerved slightly around the burst shards of black tires in the roadway.

For much of the trip, we listened to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice testify about the current administration’s preparations for potential terrorist attacks in early 2001. At some level this was a humorous event. Interrogators, Democrats and Republicans, would ask pointed questions or simply make statements meant to support or undermine the administration. Condi would do anything she could never to say anything besides what was on her script (“This was a systemic problem, and there were ongoing cultural issues that constricted communication”—I paraphrase). And everyone used Beltway jargon: “the August 6th PDB” [Presidential daily briefing], “the President tasked the FBI,” “no actionable intelligence,” and (in the answers) massive amounts of the passive voice (telling us that no-one in particular was responsible for any actions or non-actions, telling us that reality or existence in general was the only actor worth pointing out in this play).

In Richmond, Virginia, there is a Powhite Highway. Being a boy from Tennessee (when I feel like it), I found this quite humorous. In northern South Carolina, many of the interchanges (sets of entrance and exit ramps) were named after people. Imagine for a moment the honor of having an interchange named after you. If you imagine this is a great honor, take a look at one of these interchanges sometime. They are on I-95, and we can send you directions if you need them. This naming of interchanges is similar to the situation in New York’s Capital District, where we name everything after state senator Joe Bruno. He has a small stadium named after him (paid for with money he created in the state’s coffers), and our airport is graced with his bronze bust. All of this would be funny enough if Bruno were no longer with us in the flesh, but instead he remains the leader of the state senate.

I-95 is only a four-lane highway most of its length, but in Georgia it briefly widens to three lanes in each direction. This feature doesn’t last for long. Eventually, we leave I-95 and begin to move west and south thru the center of Florida. While driving south on 301, I looked around at the flat, wooded landscape, decorated with modest homes, abandoned trailers, and palmettos, and I said, This is the Florida of The Yearling. Nancy agreed—just about an hour before we passed a sign for Marjorie Rawlings’ home and one for The Yearling Restaurant. The latter listed the various game they served, including cooter (whatever that is). This part of Highway 301 is the I.B. “Skeet” Thrasher Highway.

We drove finally onto I-75 and deep into the night. I drove at almost 80mph thru the dark and over swift curves in the road. Fear slows me down, so I didn’t worry about crashing. My only goal, thirteen miles into the trip, was arrival. At one flat point in the road, we ran across a beautiful sight: hundreds of headlights approaching us on the other side of the road, interspersed with the glittering lights of state troopers’ cars. The troopers’ lights had a beautiful crystalline flicker, one I didn’t appreciate when one of the cars twisted itself away from this tableau just as we were passing it. (The car never entered the highway, but nonetheless it gave my heart a chase.)

Soon enough, we were off the highway and driving thru Englewood. The roads grew dark, but we found our way, we remembered our last trip here six years ago. As we pulled into Polynesian Village (the retirement community where my in-laws live) we saw an armadillo searching for food at the side of the road. As we waited and watched, it rose onto its hind legs, sniffing the air, its armor shining in our headlights.

Sign of the Day: Towels by the Pound

Quote of the Day:
Nancy: What license plate is that?
Geof: New Mexico.
Nancy: Oh, wow. We gotta live there. They have the best plates.

A Note to Our Correspondents

2004-04-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

Both Nancy and I lost all the e-mail sent to us at our Juno accounts on Thursday, April 8th. So if you sent us any interesting mail, please resend. (Okay, you can resend any boring e-mail as well. We can't tell the difference anyway.)

I will try to set up a comments system on this blog tonight, to facilitate communication and to avoid any other lost communications.

Not Quite Petrichor

2004-04-08T23:21:00.000-04:00

North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida

Early this week, after a rain, I stepped out of my car at work and smelled a fresh smell, not quite clean and not quite dirty, something of a clean muddy scent. I assume this smell is petrichor, the scent in the air after the first rainstorm of a season.

Today, while driving thru Georgia, on a section of I-95 that seemed to be crossing over fingers of the ocean trying to pry apart the solid land, I smelled the distinct smell of rotting sealife. Not quite petrichor.

I'll post the full account of today's travels tomorrow morning. For now, suffice it to say that we were on the road for 15 hours and that we drove exactly 984 miles. I wanted to drive an extra 16 miles so we could reach 1,000, but Nancy wasn't interested in such achievements.

From Schenectady to NoVa in Twenty-Nine Easy Steps

2004-04-07T23:43:00.000-04:00

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

For the first time in many years, the Schenectady Huths are taking a real vacation. This, for us, means a long car trip for no other purpose than to go someplace else (tho we will be seeing Nancy’s parents). But we’re not going to a wedding or a funeral or a conference. The traveling is the thing.

Since this is a real vacation, I made sure to begin it in the proper way—by staying up until 2:30 in the morning so that I’d get almost no sleep the night before. You see, I needed to finish my taxes so I wouldn’t have that huge weight across my shoulders. (After finishing my taxes, I realized that the “weight” I was talking about was actually the money in my savings account.)

Nancy and I both went to work today. But I left early for a longstanding appointment to see the dentist, and I decided to squeeze in a haircut as well. So I am now a new man. My hair, which was unfruitful in the first place, is now so short that I have no use for a comb. I donated my comb to my son Tim, who could stick twenty combs in his head and still have room for more.

In the dentist’s chair, I catnapped while the hygienist cleaned my teeth. (I have to find sleep somewhere.) Unfortunately, the dental visit took longer than I expected because I needed a huge series of 16 X-rays, without which the dentist would have nothing to look at for 30 seconds before saying, “Looks good to me.”

Nancy, meanwhile, took our annoyance of dachshunds to the kennel for a stay, packed up the car, and gave Gate (our cat) some new toys to make him think he isn’t lonely when we’re gone. Once I made it back home, we were on the road in a few minutes.

Soon Nancy was driving us down I-88, through New York’s diminutive version of the Smokey Mountains. Turkey vultures circled slowly overhead as if bringing forth a premonition. We made it through Binghamton into Pennsylvania. When we passed by Scranton on I-81, I realized that this was the first time the family had been on this section of road when it wasn’t being repaired, which made me wonder why the road was in such bad shape.

As we sat in the car listening to Nancy’s mix CD, I jotted down the names of her eclectic selection of musicians: AC/DC, Elton John, the Dixie Chicks, Uncle Kracker, Elvis the First, The Clash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Uncle Tupelo, REM (with our favorite traveling song, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”), Tal Bachman, Tom Cochrane (with our traveling theme song, “Life is a Highway”), Van Morrison, TLC, Johnny Cash, Paul Simon, the Rolling Stones, Nancy Sinatra, and the Velvet Underground. All but one of these musicians or groups has only a single song on this CD. What is your guess for the artist awarded the honor of two songs?

The day turned to night and we drove thru Harrisburg, past Gettysburg, into Maryland, over the Potomac, into a dark stretch of Virginia, and then into that part of NoVa that used to be my home. Falls Church and Herndon were around me somewhere, and I was again in the county where two of my sisters were born. As we drove east on 7, we saw a huge gibbous orange moon hugging the horizon, clinging to the tops of the trees, and we were almost there.

Soon we drove into woodsy neighborhood of Vienna filled with twisting roads and dark dips. By eleven in the evening, we were at the doorstep of Betsy and Steve’s house. Nancy’s sister and brother-in-law welcomed us with a sleeping Shannon and we talked but a bit before heading to bed.

Sign of the Day: National Workzone Week