Bob Welch's Blackberry Tales

Travel Hiatus while we get the kids through college!

2011-12-11T10:36:00.001-05:00

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” - Mark Twain

2010-11-28T10:05:00.001-05:00

Satchmo Summerfest - New Orleans

2010-08-15T11:31:00.020-04:00

New Orleans Redeux.

This is my second time in New Orleans. This time the pretense is to tour Tulane University with my son. The side benefit is the Satchmo Summerfest "happens" to coincide with our visit.

Satchmo Summerfest is Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong's birthday party. What better reason could there be for a celebration in New Orleans. Louis Armstrong was one of Jazz's pioneers and innovators. He was an American and global superstar; a musician and entertainer and one of New Orleans' own son's. On August 4th he would have been 109 years old. Ten years ago the city of New Orleans threw a birthday party for Louis's 100th birthday and it's turned into a yearly event.

August in the hottest time of the year to go to New Orleans. For the three days we were in town my skin glistened with a high moisture sheen. I was wet to the touch. But I never felt overwhelmed by the heat. I was prepared for Houston kind of heat, the kind of heat and humidity that is suffocating, like having your head wrapped in Saran Wrap so you can barely breath. New Orleans was simply like having a hot towel on your head all day - and night. The good news is everything was air conditioned. There was no shortage of stores, restaurants or bars to duck into for a cool respite. And many places left their doors wide open spilling their AC right out into the sidewalk.

When I last visited the city it was in the month of April and we feasted on crawdads and oysters. In August crabs and shrimp are what's in season. We had an amazing meal at Emeril Lagasse's restaurant called NOLA with barbecue shrimp and the best gumbo I've ever had.

We also had some very good cajun food at Mulate's and ate the biggest frog leg I've ever seen.

Tulane has a beautiful campus. It has that Ivy League feel with it's powerful granite buildings and green quads. We spent a nice day there and found some lunch out in Carrollton at a barbecue joint called Squeal.

We took a guided tour of the city which took us into the Upper Ninth ward and Mid-City. We could see the three foot water line from Katrina in these neighborhoods. Our tour guide said they don't give tours into the "deep water" neighborhoods anymore, the places where the water went up to the roof lines. "We are trying to emphasize the positivity," he said. "You understand that?" Yes we nodded, "yes". "Who 'dat!" he responded.

In the Upper Ninth we saw the Harry Connick Jr. sponsored Musicians Village where he's helping to build homes to house the city's working musicians who are the spiritual core of this city. All around town however (outside of the French Quarter and Garden District/Uptown) there are still a lot of homes, stores and empty lots where people and businesses have not returned.

In the Warehouse District we visited the National WWII Museum where we had the privilege and honor of meeting and touring the museum with a 90 year old WWII vet from Minnesota who personally recounted the war for us as we went through the exhibits and looked at the amazing collection of vehicles, weapons, photographs. I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Also in the Warehouse District after dining at Mulate's we came upon White Linen Night which is an event along Julia Street where all the art galleries host a street party - for about 40 thousand of people! It was very elegant and ethereal looking as everyone was attired in white, floating, drinks in hand, in and out of the galleries over an eight block area.

BUT - the star of the show for me again was the music. It envelops everything. New Orleans for me for me is like slipping into a hot tub. I just want to sit there and soak it all in and let the ambience and atmosphere permeate my soul and envelop me - like the humidity.

I saw my man Kermit Ruffins, the Louis Armstrong of his generation. We listened to the Japanese Louis Armstrong too, Mr. Yoshio Toyama and his Dixie Saints band who flew in especially to perform at the festival. I was most excited to see the Rebirth Brass Band and they did not disappoint. In fact it was one of those rare times where the reality of something exceeds your expectation. Those cats can blow! And they are consummate entertainers. They only stopped playing twice in an hour long show. They were like a funky brass freight train that steamrolled right over me and left my ears ringing.

On Friday night on Frenchmen Street was the Satchmo Club Strut. One wristband got you into all the clubs on the street and the chance to see over 100 bands as they rotated in and out of the clubs. Plus, brass bands paraded up and down the street spawning spontaneous Second Line parades. This was the kind of New Orleans night that blends dreams with reality. Even a brief but powerful thunderstorm could not diminish the party or stop the enthusiasm because the rain itself danced in the streets as it hit the pavement.

New Orleans is funky and genteel. It's a gumbo of cultures from the Upper Ninth to the Garden District and from the cool of April to the steam of August. Everywhere, from street corners to clubs to outdoor venues the music pulsates giving the city it's own soundtrack but more importantly fueling the beating heart of this unique city.

.... planning my next visit.

Guadalajara - Tlaquepaque

2010-04-26T19:48:00.005-04:00

Tlaquepaque (Tell-akay-pakay) is a lively neighborhood in southwestern Guadalajara. Once an independent municipality, it was overtaken by the surging growth of Guadalajara in the 20th century.

Locals and tourist flock here to enjoy an afternoon or evening. It features a large plaza called El Parián that is flanked by columned arcades and surrounded by restaurants and bars.

High end shops, art galleries and craft shops abound in the surrounding pedestrian only streets and two beautiful churches bordering on a central park called Jardin Hidalgo reach for the sky.

We had traveled so much through third world Mexico it was nice to see a different face of the country and enjoy the high end art & food here.

Here's a video of our last day in Mexico - grabbing morning coffee in El Centro and spending the day in Tlaquepaque. We strolled, shopped, ate, drank free tequila samples and of course listened to Mariachi. Mariachi are permanent fixtures in Tlaquepaque. We were serenaded by an all female group at lunch and later Dylan, Drew & I watch another male group while the girls continued to shop.

A female Mariachi with her beautiful costume.

Colorful storefronts and facades.

We ended the day with an amazing meal at Hacienda Real San Pedro along Independencia, the main pedestrian street. Mexican cuisine is of one of the worlds most distinctive and refined and this meal epitomized that. Gourmet all the way. I had a chicken mole dish. The mole was a chocolate cranberry spicy concoction. I don't even know what to say about it. Every bite was a dizzying sensory overload that had me swooning like a school girl.

- And for one final surprise we were introduced to Mexican wine. Who knew Mexico had vineyards? I had a Barbera red wine from Sonora - and it was excellent.

Viva la Mexico. The landscape, the architecture, the people, the food, the culture and the never ending fiesta's are a feast for the senses. If you go to Mexico plan an excursion away from the beach resorts. You won't be disappointed.

To read about our whole trip start here!

Guadalajara - El Centro

2010-04-10T16:35:00.005-04:00

Guadalajara! I sing the word every time I say it. I sing to the tune of the Mariachi song of the same name. And by now you all know I love the Mariachi music that originated here in the State of Jalisco.

We drove from Ajijic to Guadalajara "the back way", which means we didn't take the direct highway from Chapala to Guadalajara. We drove down along the north shore of Lago de Chapala through Jocotepec and came up into Guadalajara from the south. The countryside was, as usual, gorgeous. We drove through valley's filled with crops and cows, poor villages and the occasional agave field until gradually the city was upon us.

Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico with a metropolitan area of 4 million inhabitants. We stayed in the historic district downtown called El Centro where the city was founded in the 16th century. The architecture is monumental and Spanish colonial. I felt like I was in Spain.

The Cathedral is a highlight of El Centro and is abutted by one of many beautifully designed plazas that are positioned every couple of blocks.

We dropped our bags at the Hotel de Mendoza and promptly lit out looking for food.
It was Ash Wednesday. Molly & I ducked into the ancient Santa Maria de Gracia church (1542) and after some amount of confused conversation we finally got the priest to understand we were Catholic and he smudged us. It was pretty cool.

It was cold and rainy but that didn't stop us from exploring. We walked down a pedestrian street called Paseo Morelos into the Plaza Tapatia which was lined with shops and restaurants and populated with wonderful sculpture and fountains.

The pedestrian friendly Paseo Morelos on a sunny day.

We bought Dylan's buddy a Bimbo sponsored soccer shirt. Bimbo in Mexico is a bread company but to us Norte Americanos it's hilarious. :)

At the end of Paseo Morelos we lingered at the bronze sculptures of Alejandro Colunga which are situated in front of the Instituto Cultural Cabanas. Each depicts a magician transforming himself into a sofa or chair. They are freaky and fascinating at the same time. He must be related to Tim Burton.

From here we ducked into the Mercado Libertad, better known as Mercado San Juan de Dios (San Juan de Dios Market). It's one of the largest indoor markets in the country with an area of 4000 square meters. It's impossible to describe how large this place is and how much merchandise is available. Each vendor has a small space and they are packed cheek to jowl in endless aisles of variety, color and activity. There are approximately two thousand nine hundred eighty vendor stands in the market, selling clothing, eyeglasses, shoes, movies, video games, CDs, electrical & computer goods, crafts, produce, live animals, produce and prepared foods.

We bought a handmade mandolin for Dylan from a vendor for the equivalent of $70.00US...including a carry case!

As night fell on El Centro the buildings were beautifully lit up making the majestic but austere Spanish architecture light up like a dream. Authority and dominance - and the fearful long arm of the Spanish Inquisition, who could disappear you forever behind these facades, became a distant memory. We were simply left to marvel at the intricate details of these amazing buildings.

El Centro
Photo by Phillipe Mor

I wanted to show everybody a mariachi band and I had my eye on the Plaza de los Mariachis‎ but we were consistently told not to go. Apparently it's not a place to go at night as a family but we got another recommendation and hunted down Le Epoca De Oro Restaurant Bar Mariachi. I know Molly was suspect but she played along with me and we all had a lot of fun, the food was wonderful...and yes, we were serenaded by a Mariachi Band. Ultimately Molly was extremely taken by the guys with their striking costumes and operatic harmonies.

The streets were alive with pedestrians and music coming out of clubs as we walked back to the hotel. The rain had stopped. We'd had a great adventure on our grand tour of El Centro. We crashed hard when we got back to the hotel...so hard we didn't realize until morning that our mattresses were like slabs of concrete.

The next day we drove out to wonderful neighborhood in southeastern Guadalajara called Tlaquepaque. Read here.

To read about our whole trip from the beginning start here.

Raquete Club, Lake Chapala - A Day In The Life

2010-03-26T09:26:00.017-04:00

Sunrise. The Raquete Club in San Juan Cosala. The sounds of bird song, dogs barking and donkeys braying drift up the hill as the village below comes to life.

The morning light on a Raquete Club home.

Afternoon view from Monte Coxala Spa, Raquete Club, San Juan Cosala.

Siesta....come on, it is Mexico!

Photo by Ron Russell
Time for a dip.

Our wonderful hostess Grandauntie Senora Dorothea with her two grandkids.

Next - we're off to explore Guadalajara.

Irish Goddess meets Mexican Gods

2010-03-26T09:19:00.002-04:00

Irish Goddess meets Mexican Gods.

I've Been Everywhere

2010-03-19T16:10:00.010-04:00

As Johnny Cash sang "I've been everywhere!"

Well not quite - not even close but this map is pretty cool - and my bucket list includes "everywhere!"

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Create your own travel map or travel blog

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Ajijic Carnaval Los Toros 2010 (Rodeo in Ajijic, Mexico)

2010-03-04T14:42:00.023-05:00

To cap the end of pre-Lent festivities Ajijic holds a rodeo at the Lienzo Charro ring. It's packed with people of all ages - all dressed in fine clothes; dresses, pressed shirts & jeans, cowboy boots & hats. Young boys are smartly dressed like miniature versions of their Charro fathers.

Us - in the stands

A 20 piece Banda band plays live on stage during the entire event with a bouncy singer proudly crooning over blasts of trumpets, trombones, clarinets, sousaphone, accordion and drums.

A 20 piece band! - at a rodeo! How awesome. (You'll see them in the video below)

Traditional Charro Yes he's holding a bottle of tequila!

There was plenty of Tacate cervesas (beer) to be had but the local preference was Squirt soda with tequila. Rodeo fans came to their seats carrying big cardboard trays (box bottoms for cases of beer or soda) filled with 6-8 Squirt cans, plastic cups, a bag of ice and a quart of tequila laid flat. After they were seated they filled all the cups with ice and soda and passed them around to their neighbors - then, with everybody holding out their cups the ritual pouring of the tequila took place, it's golden stream arcing into each cup.... nice.

The rodeo was a lively event and the bulls got progressively bigger. Watch the video to see locals jumping in the ring to taunt the bulls and prove their manhood.

The most exciting part of the rodeo starts at 1:29 on the video - and unfortunately I was so caught up in the moment I took my eyes off the video camera and just watched. Listen to the crowd scream at 1:33. The bull targets a horse and rider, gets up under them and launches them out of the bull ring into a crowded alleyway of people. Holy sh@t! You can see the back of the horse in the alley at 1:38 after I realize I'm missing the action and pan the camera over there!

Great experience. I love getting out into community events when I travel and I love seeing this multi-generational way of life in Mexico. It's sad we've lost that in modern America.

We had some tasty street food on the way home. Drew got diarrhea. Ooops. :)

During our visit we stayed in the beautiful Raquete Club in San Juan Cosala. Next post ...beauty shots. :)

Ajijic, Mexico

2010-02-24T09:59:00.023-05:00

Beautiful Ajijic. This is my second visit here. See my previous posts for more info.

What a great place to hang out.....

The village is alive with families and kids - and the clip clop of horse shoes on cobble.

I want to get into this Cathedral. It's always locked when I stop by. Maybe I better come by on a Sunday morning.

Across the street from the Cathedral is an amazing coffee shop, El Cafe Grande Cafe. It smells so good from the sidewalk you can't resist it. The aroma pulls you in by the nose. I didn't miss my Starbucks one bit.

I love the hand painted facades. They are beautiful. Son bastante.

Native weavers set-up down by the lake shore to work and sell their wares.

The most beautiful weaving's I saw were rugs from Oaxaca. I decided not to buy one here but to wait until I visit Oaxaca to buy one direct from a weaver.

Calle Colon, the main commercial street from the Carraterra to the waterfront.

Here we are touring Ajijic. In the town plaza is an event for the local horsemen and ranchers who provided the bulls for the upcoming rodeo - then we head to the waterfront. Molly and I end up at Las Caballerizas, high on the mountain in San Juan Cosala overlooking Lake Chapala with the sun setting and a couple strong margaritas. Nice. It's Valentine's day so I wish her Feliz dia de amor.

We missed the final Carnaval parade on Fat Tuesday in which Los Zayacos dance through the streets. The festivities are based on the tradition of Toro de Once when livestock raisers used to drive bulls into town on horseback early in the morning to show off the quality of rodeo stock. Now the townsfolk parade instead with colorful floats, bands and Los Zayacos, who are boys & men dressed up like busty broads or bearded men. Giggling children chase them through the streets and Los Zayacos throw confetti or baking flour back. Eric and Karen from Trans America's Journeys were there. Here's their video.

For more Ajijic Carnaval parade videos from Trans America's Journeys click here.

We did get to the Lienzo Charro (bull ring) to see Los Toros though (the Carnaval rodeo) - see my next post. It's awesome!

Chapala Mexico - Midget Bullfighters Show - Enanitos Toreros

2010-02-23T09:19:00.011-05:00

A midget bullfighters show! Who could resist?

The event was at the Lienzo Charro - which I think translates to "Horseman's Canvas," but it was a little bull ring. Very cool. It was filled with families, especially little kids who giggled and laughed at the little people fighting the little cows. I'll never forget it.

A young Charro ( buckeroo)

See for yourself! Yes, that's me laughing out loud in the video!

Next we visit Ajijic, a beautiful village on the shore of Lake Chapala.

Ajijic & Chapala Mexico - on Lake Chapala

2010-02-22T09:01:00.019-05:00

Back to Ajijic!

5 months after my road-trip into the heart of Mexico, I'm back. This time I flew - with the whole family.

Flying in is so much easier - and so antiseptic compared to driving. No dusty little towns, no road-side shepherds or stops for gas at a PEMEX oasis. See my Mexican road trip posts.

We flew from Boston to Atlanta to Mexico City to Guadalajara - and from there we drove another 20 miles to Lake Chapala. We didn't intend to fly through Mexico City but a snow storm in Atlanta canceled our original flight. Snow in Atlanta ...who knew?

Customs was easy and friendly, bright, clean and modern - very different from driving across the border, in the dark, at Nuevo Laredo those few months ago.

Traveler's note: You NEED to pick up your own luggage from international baggage and check it in again domestically if you are transferring through Mexico City. No one explained that to us. Thank God another couple had the same issue - and they were Mexican's living in Chicago. They helped us navigate the language barrier and opaque instructions. Finally we found our luggage and after missing our intended flight to Guadalajara, caught a later one.

The beauty of Mexico City surprised me. It sits in an enormous bowl surrounded by mountains. The sun was starting to descend in the west giving the whole city a golden glow. The landscape undulated with hills, canyons and small mountains. I expected a big flat expanse like LA but this was definitely more interesting. A tour of Mexico City is now on my "List".

My son Drew couldn't wait to try a Mexican Coke. It's made from sugar cane instead of corn syrup, and people say that the fizz lasts longer due to the glass bottle. Believe me, it tastes awesome! It tastes like Coke did when I was a kid ...and I'm a sucker for the glass bottles.

Drew in the Mexico City airport.

Arriving on the shores of Lago de Chapala in mid February we get to experience the tail end of Carnaval (yes Carnaval with an "a" not Carnival with an "i"), Carnaval is a full week of celebrations leading up to Lent. Ajijic and Chapala's celebrations involve parades, fiestas and rodeos.

Our first stop, Chapala and it's Malecon (boardwalk).

Carnaval Parade

Video of us along the Chapala Malecon - and check out the bowl made of lava rock called a molcajete. Our food is boiling - cheese, peppers, onions, shrimp, octopus. Man that was good with a Corona. And if you listen closely you'll hear the announcer of a soccer match on TV say Gooooooooooooooooooaalllllllll! for like 5 minutes. :)

Next, Midget bullfighters ...really. They are a traveling troupe - and a lot of fun, especially for the kids.

NestleNook Farm in Jackson, NH

2010-01-08T17:59:00.009-05:00

NestleNook Farm - a quintessentially New England winter scene in Jackson, NH. I felt part of a Currier & Ives post card. Sleigh rides, skating, downhill skiing, an open fire, red wine. A good place for date night!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

Touring Lake Chapala Mexico. Ajijic, San Juan Cosala, Chapala & Jocotepec

2009-11-10T14:25:00.052-05:00

The first morning after our 17 hour marathon drive from the U.S. border I looked down from Dorothy's house on the mountain above San Juan Cosala and out to Lake Chapala. I took a long slow breath.

Ahhh.

We had strong coffee. The air was cool. Palm trees waved in the modest breeze. Roosters crowed, dogs barked, the sky opened and God rays pierced the Mediterranean scene. We needed this. We deserved this.

Dorothy now lives this.

The lake is big. I couldn't see the ends of it in either direction but you can see mountains - all around, and directly across the lake rises a beautifully symmetrical peak like a volcano.

We drove down to the village of Ajijic ( A-hee-hee) for lunch. I had my first taste of authentic Mexican food - one of the world's great cuisines, right up there with Italian, French, Japanese & Chinese. It's unique, flavorful and occasionally spicy. It's gourmet.

Dorothy, having previously visited here knew the right restaurants to patronize and what not to ingest. She pointed out certain ice cubes that where tube shaped.
"These" she said "are purified ice cubes. This is clean water. If you don't get ice cubes like this in your glass, don't drink."
Our food was amazing and fresh. The sauces where complex. The salsa fresh. The beer cold.

Ajijic is old and intimate with narrow cobblestoned streets. Dorothy had told me the streets were cobblestone and I thought - oh like Paris... not even close. These were not squared off Euro style pavers, these streets were paved with real stones, patiently and expertly placed.

The village is said to be 450 years old. The names of the villages here along Lake Chapala, like Ajijic and Chapala, are pre-Spanish Indian place names derived from Nahuatl, the native language of the area and part of the Uto-Aztecean family of languages.

Check out the beauty of Ajijic.

The colorfully painted buildings hug the narrow streets. Private homes, stores, restaurants, bars and inns all co-exist and keep the street life lively.

For every town a Cathedral...from the 1500's! The Mexicans are overwhelmingly Catholic.

And maybe another chapel too... with a cervesa (beer) tent out front for the holiday.

And definitely a plaza. When trees die in Ajijic Plaza they don't cut them down - they sculpt them. Look at the fish leaping out of this old tree

We spent two enchanting nights in the plaza. It was the week running up to Mexican Independence Day so there were festivities every night. The plaza was packed. Teenagers promenading, parents with little one's in tow, grandparents sitting on the benches, food vendors behind their sizzling stalls, traditional music filling the air. The plaza was festively decorated in the red, green & white colors of Mexico and twinkled at night with strung lights. It's literally the living room of the town. This is a family centered culture. It was wonderful and heartwarming to see.

As we walked through town one night I was wary as usual. It was dark. The town is not lit like American's are used too. We approached a huddle of teenagers & men. Dorothy & I were alone. I eyed them like a mouse watching a cat. Two doors up I noticed a women with two children on the sidewalk and a grandmother in the door. Quickly, whatever tension, whatever readiness I've acquired from walking American cities relaxed as I realized, again, that this is a family oriented culture. This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody's business. There are Mom's & Dad's and Grandparents and little kids everywhere and they are watching out for each other. It takes a village.

In the 60's the village started to attract artists & writers from North America ( maybe it was the 72 degree average temperature) and very slowly has built up an international ex-pat community of 6-10 thousand people. There are many First World homes and condos here but the towns and surrounding area is definitely Mexican. The ex-pats integrate with the locals. This is not a tourist town or a western style village - this is very much Mexican.

We left Ajijic and explored the communities up & down the north shore of the lake. We drove down to Jocotepec (Ho-co-ta-pek) which is a town versus the smaller village of Ajijic. It's a working class town with it's own beautiful church. We were here as school let out. The town was full of impeccably clean & smiling uniformed school kids. The town wore the wear and tear of urban life but the kids were spotless. So cute. Mom's and Dad's stood on the sidewalk waiting to pick up their kids and then walked off hand in hand. Very sweet.

We also drove down into San Juan Cosala which is similiar to Ajijic but with obviously less money flowing into it. This is a local village without the ex-pat focused shops, Inns, hotels, homes & restaurants. We ate here at a little cantina called Viva Mexico. Wonderful.

Let's eat! ...again.

View out to the street.

Streetscape in San Juan Cosala

There's never a shortage of Corona.

The next day we drove up to Chapala and explored the waterfront.

Here's some video we took touring around.

Chapala is the biggest of the settlements we toured. It's a city. We walked along the waterfront. We walked the "boardwalk" called the Malecon. We browsed traditional artisan wares and handicrafts. There were a couple tiny picturesque and ancient looking Mexican Indian women squatting with their legs folded under themselves in impossible positions weaving rugs and blankets. It was a National Geographic moment but it didn't feel right to take their picture and not buy anything. - next time. They were beautiful.

We stopped for drinks at a waterfront restaurant and were serenaded by Mariachi again. I loved the Mariachi. I loved the harmonic singing, the strident guitar, the hollow bass and the staccato hits of the horns. It's so passionate. The uniforms are flashy and the hats are huge and wide and scream "Look at me"!

Maricahi were the soundtrack of my Lake Chapala tour. Between Ajijic and San Juan Cosala, where Dorothy's house is, is a string of open air restaurants along the lake. They are family restaurants where people go to spend the day. Barbecues are always working and Mariachi are either filling the air with music or walking up the street to their next gig. It's all very festive and exciting. And there are guys in the street as you pass by waving and whistling at you to get you to pull into their restaurant. They are like matadors against the traffic.

I wasn't here long enough - just long enough to get my bearings and to get Mexico in my blood. Just long enough to get Mariachi into my heart. Just long enough to breathe the clean air and feel the Mediterranean climate on my skin. Just long enough to begin to understand the culture - to come to terms with riches & poverty living side by side.

I am planning my next trip back. It's a place I want to discover more of. And I'm learning Spanish so I can immerse myself better. It's a country full of native and Spanish colonial history, beautiful landscapes, incredible architecture, a proud cultural heritage - and what the heck, they invented Tequila!

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

Dorothy's Mexico Ranchero

2009-11-05T15:34:00.030-05:00

For those of you following our journey into the heart of Mexico - and you've decided you'll never see Dorothy again - banish all though of it.

Lake Chapala is a beautiful area. Go visit! Thousands of Ex-Pats from the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Middle East have settled here - and plenty of well-off Mexicans too.

Check out the beautiful domicile she scored!

Entrance to the house.

Lake Chapala is surrounded by mountains. The house is in a development called The Racquet Club that's part way up a mountain. They have their own tennis courts and a gigantic pool!

This view looks down to the driveway. Look straight out to see the lake and the mountain on the other side of the lake.

Guardian at the entrance to the driveway.

Front patio and porch. Great views of the lake from here. I spent two nights here listening to the high horns of the mariachi drifting up the hill to me....drinking wine. Awesome morning coffee spot too. WiFi enabled!

Interior courtyard. Two of three bedrooms and the main living/dining/kitchen areas all open into the courtyard.

An outdoor covered walkway surrounds the courtyard. The house is beautifully decorated.

Living room - with fireplace!

View into the kitchen.

3 bedrooms, living/dining room, kitchen, 3 bathrooms, patio, porches, backyard, view of the lake and mountains, 80 degrees year round, palm trees, tennis courts, pool, club house, $1.00 = 13.00 Pesos! What's not to love.

This is view down the street where Dorothy's house is. It's a pretty chi chi neighborhood.

And speaking of the neighborhood. Check out his spa you can walk to from Dorothy's house.

It's called the Monte Coxala Spa. Click the link.

The architecture is based on Mexico's great civilization's of the past; the Olmecs, the Maya and the Aztecs.

We took a walk through the grounds.

Whiplash! - poverty to riches, ying to yang, Biblical time to modern time, desert to lush. It all lives side by side in Mexico.

So...it's pretty awesome in Lake Chapala and Dorothy is back in the saddle again!!

Next we tour the north shore of Lake Chapala and the towns and villages of Ajijic, San Juan Cosala, Jocotepec and Chapala.

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

San Luis Potosi to Lake Chapala - end of Day 2 - Austin to Guadalajara

2009-11-01T17:15:00.044-05:00

We left San Luis Potosi and we ran out of toll road, it ended. We were making such good time - we didn't expect this. We merged onto a two lane road. The traffic was moderate but there were plenty of trucks - which we were stuck behind. The good news - the countryside was beautiful. It was green and lush. At times it looked like Upstate New York with it's planted fields and farmsteads with rows of deciduous trees.

Photo by Said Arabian - on Flikr, taken in taken in Huichapan, in Hidalgo - but reminiscent of what I drove through.

The trucks were no obstacle for the speedy locals drivers. They passed two trucks at a time. They passed going up hill. Holy shite! We stayed in our lane. It's not like we were crawling, we were still going 55mph. I watched the Mexican drivers, holding my breath, waiting for a head on crash but they always made it... just in the nick of time.

At one point the toll road reappeared - but only one side of it. In effect we were still on a two lane road. The other lanes were incomplete. It was starting to get dark. The unopened side of the highway was being used by locals. Some cars had headlights, some only had one headlight. There was a pick-up with a payload full of passengers driving down the center of the road. I watched this quiet ghostly road as the cars closed on each other blindly climbing the crest of a hill. Oh my God. How many accidents do they have I wondered - simultaneously recalling memories from my childhood of cars with one headlight and pick-ups full of people. We crested the hill and and took a sharp downward turn to our left never knowing what metal crunching meeting those cars might have had.

As we traveled further south I thought the land would get more populated - and it does according to the map but our view from the road was still of incredibly huge valleys and beautiful farm land. I can't emphasize how ginormous (like giant and enormous combined) the valleys were. These were humongously flat valleys with beautiful silhouetted California type mountains rising all around us.

At one point we drove through the outskirts of an Indian village. The traffic slowed and the pedestrian traffic increased. Roadside vendors and shops displayed wares in front of basic buildings that to North American eyes looked poor and squalid. Down the side streets were the same dirt roads we'd been seeing all day. The houses were basic shells. What they had for doors, windows, plumbing & electricity was hard to tell but I'm sure it was very basic if non-existing. The indigenous Indians of Mexico have the same poverty issues as North America's Indians.

Photo by Walter Reed Flikr

We certainly met people who lived a first world lifestyle. The two guys who helped us at the Subway sandwich shop in San Luis Potosi were obviously of Spanish or European descent and lived a more privileged life than the country people we've seen on the road today.

Outside the town, back in the countryside, Dorothy spies a whole group of women washing and beating clothes against the rocks of a stream. The road is heavy with vehicles and pedestrians. Cars and trucks wiz by inches from walkers, bike riders, horsemen and donkeys. It scares the crap out of me. We saw two horses laying dead in the road a few hours back. I'm sure they got grazed & killed and in these close quarters I could see it happening in my mind's eye.

The sun begins it's downward slope ahead of us. Dusk is upon us. It's getting hard to see and the road we are on has no edge lines or center line. As darkness descends it's hard to orient ourselves on the road. Cars with one headlight come at us. Are we far enough over? Are we over too far? Dorothy's driving. To my right off the edge of the road is a ditch. There's no shoulder, no room for error.

Bleary eyed and exhausted after being on the road for 15 hours, we see a huge billowing storm ahead, producing lightening, flashing night to day. In the flashes of light we see dark veils of rain falling. We dread the rain. This would paralyze us. We can barely see now, rain would wash the last remnants of clarity away. This would be dangerous.

Incredibly we never see the rain. I don't know where the storm went. It had covered the entire sky in front of us and climbed miles high but we stayed dry. Thank God because soon enough we were looking down at the sprawling lights of Guadalajara. The Guadalajara metropolitan area is the second largest in Mexico with 4 million people. The traffic became intense! We anxiously watched for signage to Lake Chapala, our destination.

We were motoring along at 50 mph in bumper to bumper traffic, ...literally bumper to bumper and I saw the sign.
I yell to Dorothy "Stay to the left" but we we're boxed in by a wall of traffic.
"Get over...get over!" I say, anxious not to miss the ramp.
She jerks the wheel to signal her intention and we squeezed our way over. We take a big looping ramp - and then we're stuck again at a merge.
Five lanes of traffic were coming at us like water heading to Niagara Falls.
I could see the next sign to Chapala about 300 feet up the road.
We had to get across the five lanes of traffic in about the length of a football field or risk being swept into a city of 4 million people... who don't speak English.
It's dark and did I mention we've been in the car 16 hours? We're exhausted, harassed, ragged and ornery. We don't want to get washed away!

Photo by Alexei-naughtydevil

We sit at the exit of the on-ramp trying get into traffic. The car in front of us is frozen - not moving. The cars behind us start to nose into the oncoming traffic. Dorothy is driving. I'm looking out the window trying to gage entry into the onslaught of oncoming headlights. Dorothy sees the cars behind us in the rearview mirror trying to inch out. She turns the wheel hard right, as far as the tires will go, and jerks out from behind the car in front of us. When we turn the whole line behind us mimics our move and angles into the traffic. The oncoming cars shudder enough for us to make a jerky leap into the torrent.
I lean away from the door expecting to get hit.
Dorothy guns it and we're in traffic but the exit we need to get too is four lanes to the right and 200 feet away.
I anxiously tell Dorothy "Slide over, slide over"!
"I'm trying" she yells back.
Incredibly she crosses the four lanes but keeps going over another two lanes where the highway divides into a local street.
"Get back I say!"
"Get back where?" she screams at me!
"Over" I say
"Over where" she says. "Which way? Point, point to where I should be!"
She's yelling at me now.
The pressure is intense. There is so much traffic she can't put her head up, she can't look around. There's no time to think - just do.
"Over there!" I point to the left.
She jerks the wheel to the left, we clamor over a curb height road divide - I can't believe we don't get hit - again. We get into the correct lane just in time - 4 seconds later we take a righthand ramp following the Lake Chapala sign. Whew. Unbelievable.

Dorothy is now completely frazzled. Traumatized. We're headed the right way but we're still in the city. The eight lane highway is lined with another two lanes of local roads on each side. It's dark. There are hordes of people walking about and waiting at bus stops. Everything is dark and silhouetted and as usual the buildings are worn and badly lit. We could be in a bad area - maybe not? In North America this would look like a bad area. Dorothy wants out of the traffic in a big way. She gets over to the far right to stay out of the fray - and the next thing we know we are exiting the highway.
We were over too far right.
We end up on an exit ramp.
Oh man!
We're locked onto the ramp.
We start descending.
The highway rises on our left like water filling a sinking ship.
Oh shit - where are we headed? We enter a tunnel. It's flooded by water. It's dank and peeling. We panic quietly. I don't think we said a thing to each other. All I could think of was a similar situation that left me in the South Bronx - but that's another story.
Thankfully we pop right up on the other side of the highway. We had entered a Reverso, a u-turn. After a couple of tense miles we reverso again and leave the city lights behind us heading into the black of night.

Away from the city it got so dark I couldn't see a thing outside our headlight illumination. Eventually the road began to narrow, curve and climb. We headed over the mountain that separates Lake Chapala from metropolitan Guadalajara. The road was a typical two lane country road with not a lot of room and a deep ditch on my side. Oh God please let us get to Dorothy's place! It's late, we're tired.

.... somethings going to happen, I just know it.

We keep a steely focus - eyes glued to the road. We find the Chapala bypass and take the back road to the town of Ajijic.
Almost there!
Past Ajijic we drive another 10-15 minutes looking for Dorothy's development. After a while we're out in the boonies again and just when we thought we had missed it - voila! - there it is.
We made it. Laredo to Lake Chapala in 1 day! Whoa.

It was an amazing drive full of stunning scenery and revelations - a true adventure. I'm glad we did it.

Next post, Dorothy's house in San Luis Cosala on the beautiful shores of Lake Chapala.

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

Driving Central Mexico - Day 2 - Austin to Guadalajara

2009-10-24T09:57:00.025-04:00

Leaving Monterrey in our rear view mirror we head towards Saltillo, a city of seven hundred thousand, founded by the Spanish in 1577, but we turn south before we reach it. We are now headed into central Mexico and we didn't know it at the time but we were about to peel back the veil of the 21st century. We were about to drop into a landscape where Biblical time, the early 20th century and the modern world exist side by side.

Like ancient travelers in the Holy Land we start to see shepherds. We see goat herders and sheep herders along the highway tending their flocks. Horses and cattle too. Farmers & families pound stakes into the ground along the highway and tie-off their animals for the day. There are no grounds crews along the highways here. No need. The livestock keep everything cropped and pruned. Sadly we twice saw horses, tongues splayed, twisted and lifeless laying along the edge of the road. They must have become untethered or wandered too close to the road when a lumbering truck raged by. This grazing arrangement seems dangerous for the animals and the drivers. I wonder to myself about it but people here live a subsistence lifestyle. They can't afford for the progress of a road to take their grazing lands. I was told the land belongs to the people not the government and they have the right to graze their animals wherever they want.

Ramshackle villages of painted adobe buildings huddle along the road. Most family homes are fronted by Cantina's where they make a modest living as purveyor's of food and drink. Wood fire cookers are permanently set up out front with chicken's grilling and smoke wafting into the highway luring travelers and truckers in by their noses. The buildings are all colorfully painted. 99% of the Cantina's are building sized Corona advertisements that make me thirsty.

My intestinal scare in Nuevo Laredo and cautions about not eating road food keep us from stopping - that and the thought of dealing with a rural population who probably doesn't know a word of English. I looked longingly as we passed popular Cantinas with men grouped by the doors and sitting out front. How cool would it be to stop for a beer in an authentic Mexican Cantina... And then I thought of all the stupid Western's I've seen. Cantinas ...banditos, ...si, Cantinas, banditos .... we were in the middle of nowhere, I kept my foot on the gas.

Outside of these roadside settlements even more disheveled hovels of mud or plywood & corrugated tin structures sprouted on the parched landscape, solo or huddled in little groupings.

During one stretch we passed a squatter group of snake hunters living in these plywood & tin homes who proudly displayed snake skins for sale at stands along the side of the road.

Here's a video of us.

It was hot and dry and white here. I peeked over at the temperature gage on the trusty Subaru. It looked fine. I didn't want to break down here. How would we ever get help? I started to notice every mile the government had placed blue water barrels and emergency telephones. This desolate place must have taken a few lives in the past and shriveled them up to merge with the bone white landscape.

Thankfully, even in the middle of nowhere the clean and modern circa1970's Hess style PemEx stations were available. On the toll road we'd see one every hour or so.

We do the usual, stop, have the uniformed attendants pump our gas and use the restroom. This time we need to buy our toilet paper from a pretty little Senorita out front. 2 Pesos for a fist full. What if I need more? I don't want to come back out. Do I buy it now? Are Mexicans crinklers or folder's? 2 Peso's worth of paper turns out to be enough. Still afraid to eat and get sick we buy packaged foods. Granola bars, cookies and bottled water. We switch drivers and mount the road once more.

Back on the highway we still get excited every time we see the exotic shepherds and their herds. These are picturesque men weathered by the sun with their big staffs, over-sized white cowboy hats, western shirts and rugged blue-jeans. Sometime they are on horses but most of the time they are on foot walking or leaning on their staffs - their horse tied off to some fence or post or tree in the distance.

It feels odd to be on the modern highway, traveling at 75 miles per hour, passing through timeless towns of dirt, gravel roads and dusty buildings. In the car we're separate, we're removed from the dust & heat, the toil and the poverty. If this road hadn't bisected these towns they would be completely removed from the modern world. Other than this ribbon of road we're on there is no other concrete or asphalt or pavers in sight. The buildings don't front up to sidewalks and they are open to the air with no doors or window glass. I try to shoot video out the window but I feel bad like I'm gawking .... because I am kinda gawking, my mouth and eyes wide in wonderment. I feel like a visitor at a zoo. I stop shooting.

When we get down close to San Luis Potosi, a city of two and a half million people, we stop again at another PemEx. We are immediately swarmed by little kids who want to clean our windows. Feeling harassed after 10 hours on the road and agitated after being consistently swarmed by people with their hands out every time we stop Dorothy shoos them away. They are heart broken. I see their little shoulders slump and their heads fall forward as they walk away, eyes towards the ground, kicking rocks. But they circle around and hover nearby. They come around behind the car and look at me with their sparkling dark brown eyes and dirty faces. I dig into my pocket and give them some coinage. Their smiles could have lit that whole little town up that night. I shoo them off. No need to clean the windows. They go jubilantly skipping back to their father who was standing with some friends. They show off their booty and shyly look at me. I smile back.

Off to my left are two food vendors in semi-permanent wooden stalls. One is a Smoothie shack and the other a fruit vendor. The fruit is displayed in beautifully cascading arrangements and the colors sing, vibrant as neon. All we've eaten all day is packaged food. We've passed by Cantinas with chicken and lamb cooking on grills and cold beer while my stomach quenched and now twenty feet in from of me is real live fresh food. I give in to my Mexican food fears and walk towards the fruit stand. The fruit glistens in the sun. It's dripping and sweating in it's own sweet juices. I start to salivate. Oh this is going to taste soooo good. Maybe I'll have them make me a smoothie. A couple steps further and I see them - hundreds of flies swarming like dust mites in the sunlight. Oh man! Oh ...Damn! ....I turn around and go back to my packaged granola bar & bottled water.

We find food satisfaction further down the road however. As we skirt the perimeter of San Luis Potosi we spy a modern plaza with coffee & food shops. I spy a Subway sandwich shop. I'm so there. Fresh bread, meat & veg! We stumble a little trying to order and a couple of nice guys who speak English help us out. While we eat outdoors I speak with another young guy who spies our Florida license plates and yells "Welcome to Mexico!" Turns out he lived ten years in South Carolina. He says he loves to speak English but doesn't get much of a chance anymore. Sometimes he goes down to a town called San Miguel De Allende, where there are a lot of "white boys", to speak. I guess I'm a "white boy". They all ask us what we think of Mexico? What we think of the roads? They are surprised when we tell them the roads have been good.

And with all those good roads behind us we make the optimistic decision to not stop for the night but to continue all the way to Lake Chapala - our final destination. We thought we could be there in three hours. This was at 4:30. We wouldn't roll into Dorothy's new house until 11:30, seven dark hours later!

Next, San Luis Potosi to Lake Chapala.

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

Driving Northern Mexico - more Day 2 - Austin to Guadalajara

2009-10-17T11:41:00.027-04:00

Free from Immigration in Nuevo Laredo with all the right papers and our vehicle permit proudly displayed on the windshield behind the rear view mirror we follow our directions to the famed Toll Road. Mexico has been intently improving it's roadways and now has a fairly good road system throughout parts of the country. We'd be able to travel 75% of our trip on these tolls roads. They are smooth, four lanes wide and very much like highways in U.S.

Well ....the road signs say we're on the toll road but alas, we're on a two lane road - and we haven't seen any tolls. Are we lost already? I think not. We're heading in the right direction and I'm confident we'll hit the toll booth eventually - and importantly, the road is in good condition.

The U.S. shadows our left shoulder for a short time along the Rio Grande before we plunge south to the heart of Mexico. The landscape still looks like the southern Texas lowlands but we are definitely and immediately in Mexico. A lot of the roads off the main highway are now gravel & dirt. Plain painted adobe style roadside shops and restaurants open to the elements with no doors and windows, worn by usage and baked by the sun populate the road every few miles. Mechanics and employees work in the outdoors and stare as we cruise past.

Finally we get to a red light/green light toll that's another inland immigration check. We're a little nervous not knowing what to expect but we get a green light and are waved through. We drove through three Federales (Mexican Federal Police) roadblocks on the trip too - every time wondering what would happen. Each time they just looked as us, yelled something and waved us touristas on through.

As the miles slip by the landscape reminds me of eastern Colorado and Wyoming and then New Mexico but all reference fades away when we see these tress that look like cactuses with palm trees on top. They dot the enormous landscape in front of us and we begin to see the Sierra Madre mountain range rise in the distance.

Further south as we get nearer to Monterrey we enter the first of an endless string of enormous valleys that we are destined to drive through. There must be various micro-climates through out central Mexico because some were green and some were arid but all were inexpressibly large and beautiful - awe inspiring.

As we approach Monterrey it's time to stop and gas up. We can see the city of 3.8 million people to the south nestled up against the Sierra Madre. We pull into a PemEx gas station (a state owned monopoly). I'm driving at this point. At every filling pump there is a guy in a sharp looking uniform whipping his arms beckoning me to come to their pump like a matador trying to lure a bull to their cape. Having become used to self-serve I freeze for a moment looking at eight guys hustling and performing for my business... I choose a pump and pull in. I get out and not understanding a word of what the pump man is asking I say "fill it up". He nods. Another young kid in uniform runs over and starts to clean the windows. Everything is going smoothly. With the fill up done I ask in English, using as much international sign language and gesturing as I can muster, "do I pay here or do I go inside". The guy says "you pay me". Hmmm. Why don't I believe him - I haven't paid a gasoline attendant personally since the 70's! I look around. I don't see any cash registers or credit card swipers and I remember we were told to bring cash because gas stations don't accept credit cards. I warily pull out my money and peel off 100 Pesos, or whatever it cost, and didn't the attendant pull out a fat roll of cash from his uniform shirt pocket just like an attendant at a Mobil or Esso gas station back in the 60's or 70's! He gives me my change. I give him a tip - I think you're supposed to tip everybody. Anyway I give him a tip. These are full grown family men trying to earn a decent living. They are not owners, they are not mechanics, they do not run the store inside. Their only job is to pump the gas. I try to tell him to tip the window washer kid. I'm not sure he got that concept.

My mind starts time slicing. It's 2009 but it also feels like the 60's when I was a kid or the early 20th century - I'd flash on thoughts or memories of the U.S. as it used to be in simpler times, in slower times and sometimes in less safety conscious times over and over again as the trip progressed.

Before we hit the road again we pop into the store/diner that's a part of this PemEx complex. It's modern. It could be a diner/convenient store combo anywhere in the U.S. and the bathrooms even had a toilet seat and toilet paper!

We hit the highway again and skirt around Monterrey to the north going through it's industrial hinterlands and threading cool canyons.

We are now pointed west heading into central Mexico.

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

Nuevo Laredo - Crossing the Border into Mexico - Austin to Guadalajara - Day Two

2009-10-13T11:51:00.047-04:00

We stayed overnight on the north shore of the Rio Grande in Laredo Texas. I could have thrown a stone into Mexico. Laredo is a city of over 200k residents. The cross border Laredo & Nuevo Lardeo metropolitan area is +700k residents but where we were it had a small town feel, a quiet dark border town feel. When we arrived there was a lot of foot traffic headed back across the border for the night. We went for a little walk. We were told it was safe and we didn't encounter any trouble, although it felt edgy as we walked away from the hotel and the river along unlit, poor & relatively deserted streets.

The town is Mexican in character. It was a part of the Spanish Colonial empire and Mexico at one point - as was all of Texas and the western U.S. It was also the capital of The Republic of the Rio Grande for 238 days.

Our hotel, La Posada, was posh.

It sat on Plaza San Agustin and had two beautiful restaurants full of affluent travelers.

Dorothy was spoiling me before we crossed into Mexico. We had an amazing dinner that included an array of Mexican sauces, spices & cheese smothering lamb, duck & chicken.

Across the Rio Grande was Nuevo Laredo, a town now famous for the Mexican drug wars, violent murders and kidnappings. We were headed there in the AM. I couldn't help being a little apprehensive.

We were up at 6:00 AM to beat the traffic and entered Mexico on International Bridge # 2. It was still dark out. On the Mexican side of the bridge we were dumped into Neuvo Laredo. I was thinking we'd go right onto a Mexican highway but no, we were dumped into the frayed edges of town...and a poor part of town at that. We were not in Kansas anymore.

There were vehicles pulled over at a Declaration Station. It was small steel structure like a gas station canopy.

I asked Dorothy "do we need to stop?"
"I don't think so" she said.
There were pick-up trucks loaded to the gills being searched and Mexican army personnel in camouflage uniforms and machine guns looking over the scene.

Photo by Guillermo Batres Reuters El Manana De Nuevo Lared

We drove slowly by ... confused. We'd heard of a second "border" about 30 miles into the country where people without the right papers are turned around and sent back. We didn't want that.

Dorothy's car was packed to the gills too so we asked he next person we saw if we were supposed to declare anything.

Whoosh!

We were surrounded by three Mexican guys speaking rapid fire Spanish and motioning us to follow them. We slowly drove half a block and they directed us into an empty parking lot surrounded by the back alleys of buildings still silhouetted and gray in the early morning darkness. We suddenly felt very isolated. Soon we were surrounded by up to six guys all peering in the windows at us. They had lanyards with badge holders but there were no badges in them. They told us they were working with the immigration officials but we started to feel caged. We couldn't understand them and quickly concluded we were being hustled.

"No-one told me I had to declare anything" Dorothy said to me.
"I think we should get outta here"
I agreed.
She put the car in reverse and started backing out.
"We're leaving" she said "Gracias but I think we're fine" she said rolling up the windows while the hombres pulled their heads and fingers out of the way.
"OK just gimme 100 Peso" one of the guys said and held Dorothy's window.
She stepped on the gas!
"Watch it" I said looking out the back window. There were guys surrounding the car. The last thing we needed to do was run someone over.
We inched out of the lot and the guy who asked for the Pesos became consoling, "OK, ok" he said in Spanglish "just go up two blocks and take a left and you'll get to the immigration center.

I looked up the street. This was not a neighborhood I wanted to go into ... especially in the dark with not a lot of people around. All I could think of was they were sending us into a trap.

I quickly looked at the directions Dorothy had meticulously put together. They said the same thing - go over the bridge into town and take the second left.

"The directions agree with what he's telling us" I said. "Go"!

We drove up to the corner and as we made our turn a guy stepped out in front of the car. Dorothy hit the breaks to stop from hitting him. He leaned over the hood and started to clean the windshield. Crap. Dorothy quickly pulled out some Pesos she had gotten prior to the trip and held a coin out the window. The guy came over to grab it. When he did, we took off.

We rambled down a poor dilapidated residential street with roaming dogs and chickens hoping and praying we were going the right way....drug wars, kidnapping and killing on our minds - but unspoken.

Photo by Ramone Pavia on Flikr

At the end of the street - in what seemed a long way - we were dumped at a divided highway. Yay! There's a sign that says Immigration. We take a left but see two choices of roads to take. They head in the same direction but are divided by a concrete barrier. Shite. We choose the road on our left.

We chose wrong.
We end up on the bridge back to the U.S.
We tell the Mexican immigration official that we're trying to get INTO Mexico not out. Incredibly he helps us back out of the immigration toll booth (this would've never happened at a U.S. immigration booth) and tells us to make a u-turn and go back the way we came - then take the road on the far right - the road we opted not to take. We turn around and find we are barricaded in the toll plaza. Again, incredibly, the custom's official runs down and moves the barricades for us.

We're free - but guess what? We have to take a right turn back into the neighborhood we just drove through to get back down to the entry for the immigration entrance.

Photo by RNRobert's on Flickr

It's starting to get light as we enter the neighborhood again and Dorothy is driving way too fast now. We're a bit on edge.
"Easy, slow down" I say. "We're cool."
As soon as I say that a guy with no legs in a wheelchair is trying to maneuver his way in front of us and just past him another young hombre is looking to wash our windshield or sell us a newspaper. Dorothy swerves around these potential "traps" (because as we just learned, if you stop or slow down you are swarmed with people looking for money) and roaming dogs like Dale Earnhardt and after running the Mexican gauntlet for the second time we pop out onto the highway again and take the correct turn down to the Immigration Center.

We pull into a fenced in parking lot that's fairly empty - which is why we decided to cross early in the morning. The building is a plain concrete block building.

We enter, there are no lines. We start to fill out the papers for 180 day Visas and my intestines start to gurgle, then rumble. It grows more intense. I try to ignore it but the train has left the station. What did we eat last night? Could I have gotten Montezuma's revenge in Laredo? In the U.S. for Pete's sake?! The trip hasn't even started!

I drop my pencil. "I gotta go" I tell Dorothy and I take off.
I find the bathroom and much to my dismay there is no toilet seat and even worse - far worse - is there is no toilet paper!
Oh my God.
What am I going to do?
God answers as a young women comes out of an adjoining stall. She's the cleaning women. She looks at me and reads the panic on my face. She holds a finger up and leaves the bathroom. She comes back with a fifteen inch roll of toilet paper. I'm elated. I take the whole roll and enter the stall. I paper the seat and do my business.

In Mexico a lot of public bathrooms don't have toilet seats or toilet paper.
The seat you learn to live without, the paper you generally buy from a toilet paper entrepreneur who stands outside the bathroom.

Relieved and feeling better I open the stall door to see a line of somber faced Mexicans staring at me.
If looks could kill.
They point at the toilet paper I'm holding and then over to the wall.
I see a giant toilet paper holder flipped open and empty.
Oops, this fifteen inch roll is public toilet paper.
You're supposed to come in, take some toilet paper and do your business.
I had the whole roll!
I sheepishly turned and pointed to the cleaning women. "She gave it to me. Sorry" I said in English, handing it over.
They glowered at me and said some things I didn't understand - maybe a good thing but damn, I wish I knew Spanish. I wished that over and over again over the next few days.

I got back to Dorothy who was whizzing through the paperwork. She filled me in on what to do and we finished - with a little translation help from a nice Mexican-Texan family.

Bueno. We were on our way. Border crossed. Check.

It felt pretty hairy. I'm sure my mind ratcheted up the danger more than what was real but most of our news of Mexico in the U.S. is about the border violence. It set me on guard and as anyone would do in uncharted waters I stayed on alert for the rest of the trip.

Next we head into Northern Mexico.

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

San Antonio - Day 1 - Austin to Guadalajara road trip

2009-10-12T14:55:00.022-04:00

My wife's Aunt is retiring to Lake Chapala Mexico. And guess who volunteered to drive down to Mexico with her? :)

I flew from Boston to Austin to meet Dorothy who'd left from Washington DC days earlier. We made a beeline from the Austin Airport to San Antonio where I wanted to see the Alamo. "Remember the Alamo" is a cry we all know well and I was excited to see the legendary building. I was also excited to see the famed San Antonio Riverwalk.

We motored south through a surprisingly green Texas landscape and in 2 hours we were in San Antonio. We found a parking lot in what looked like a relatively ordinary Texas city and made our way to the Riverwalk where we were blown away by what lay one story below street level.

The Riverwalk definitely lived up to it's billing. It's beautiful. When you climb down the stairs to the river you enter a completely different world of water, verdant vegetation and majestic trees. Both sides of the winding U shaped river that snakes it's way through downtown San Antonio were full of restaurants, bars, clubs, shops and hotels.

What really surprised me was how private it all was. Driving through San Antonio you'd never know the river was even there. You really have to descend down into the Riverwalk to see it. I'm sure back in the day the river was simply a dirty old back alley waste receptacle of a gully.

Now the river is lined on both sides with wide sidewalks and grimy rear basement walls are now beautiful and inviting places to linger or shop.

The Alamo on the other hand was a bit disappointing. I thought it would be a historical museum kept as it was 1836 when General Santa Anna and his Mexican Army crushed a lowly group of feisty Texian supporters including legends like Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie. Instead the Alamo grounds are now a beautiful park-like compound and the icon that is the "Alamo" building is actually a memorial chapel whose exit door puts you on a path to the gift shop - which was actually full of historic Bowie knives - pretty cool....ok yeah, I bought a gift, a mini Alamo.

What to do? Back to the Riverwalk for some Mexican food and Margaritas. We were clearly closer to Mexico as the Mexican population became ubiquitous - and - most importantly we encounter our first Mariachis!

Check us out in moving pictures!

Next, we cross the border at Nuevo Laredo.

Honk Festival 2009 - Boston, Ma.

2009-10-11T15:49:00.011-04:00

Every year in Boston, Davis Square Somerville to be specific, Honk Fest happens. It's a festival of Street Bands from all over the world. This years participants included bands from Oakland, Montreal, Rome Italy, Vancouver, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, New Orleans, Providence, Boston and many more.... It's a lot of fun. Bank geeks unite.

one time, in band camp...

I met my Bro at the Fest this year for the Saturday events. On Sunday there is a Honk parade from Davis Square to Harvard Square - for the annual Oktoberfest. Next year we go on Sunday!

Check it out.

Cooter Brown's - New Orleans

2009-10-06T16:17:00.004-04:00

Our cabbie Linda (previous post) dropped us at Cooter Brown's - a Tavern and Oyster Bar. I've never tasted Oysters like I had in New Orleans. They were big and meaty and clean. I felt like I was eating Gnocchi not Oysters. The Mississippi sends about a billion gallons of fresh water over them everyday so you don't get that briny flavor.

Combine that with an Alligator Po-Boy and an ice cold Abita and you have the start of a great night.

Fun cabbie - New Orleans

2009-10-05T21:39:00.002-04:00

Linda is a cab driver in New Orleans. She picked us up on Magazine street and we intended to go back to the French Quarter for oysters but Linda took it upon herself to give us a riotous tour around the Garden District, Uptown and Carrollton - and she dropped us at Cooter Brown's, a great Tavern and Oyster Bar. Mmmm.

Breakfast at Brennen's - New Orleans style!

2009-09-29T11:02:00.008-04:00

I promised our waiter at Brennen's in New Orleans (Kenneth) last April ('09) that he would be on YouTube - but I never posted his fabulous breakfast feats of magic and daring do.

Well better late than never. We had a lot of fun with Kenneth and the food was excellent!

Next time you're in Brennen's tell Kenneth you saw him on YouTube!

Fishing in Salem Sound - Salem, Ma.

2009-09-27T19:09:00.018-04:00

Me

Dan

On a beautiful Fall day in early Sept my buddy John took me and my brother out fishing in Salem Sound, Massachusetts. Being out on the water on a crisp calm day is like going to church. Sandwiched between the blue of the sky and the blue of the water we scouted for birds and rippling water as we looked for bait fish. We watched the beautiful shorelines of Marblehead, Salem, Beverly and Manchester as we trolled along. We had some sandwiches, drank some beer and told tall tales and lies. But most of all we fished - and best of all, my brother, who has never been fishing on the ocean, pulled in a beautiful 30 1/2" Striped Bass.

The Captain - John Sutyak

And it doesn't end there. The beautiful fish made a beautiful meal and nourished our stomachs as well as our souls.

Great day. Thanks John!

Check out the video - from swimming to de-finning to eatin' and grinning.

Austin at Last

2009-07-31T10:01:00.001-04:00

I went to sleep last night to the nasal strains of Willie Nelson. Why? To get in the mood. I'm at the airport now boarding a plane to Austin Texas. I've been to Dallas, I've been to Ft. Worth, I've been to Houston, I've slept under the stars in Amarillo and stood in the center of Shamrock Texas, but the only place I ever really wanted to go in Texas is Austin. It's on "my list". So here I go, two-stepping my way into Texas.

My interest in Austin started through finding Willie's music somewhere in the '90's. I was listening to Willie, Lyle Lovett, k.d. Lang, Nanci Griffith and that opened up country music and the aura of Austin Texas to me.

In the 1970's the country outlaw movement started with Willie and Wayland Jennings in Austin and changed country music forever. Austin is the alternative Texas. It's the place where creative types and rebels go to live. For a town smaller than Rochester, NY it's amazing to think of the volume of musicians that have propelled themselves onto the national scene from there. Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Shawn Colvin, Christopher Cross, Charlie Sexton, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, The Butthole Surfers, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Asleep at The Wheel, Dale Watson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jr. Brown, Nanci Griffith, Townes Van Zandt, etc.

The city is one of America's music mecca's. 6th St. and South Congress Avenue are street names I've heard in numerous songs and I look forward to patronizing their fine establishments. Austin calls itself the "Live Music Capital of The World" and I intend to find out why. My trip however has a particular focus. I want "real Texas". Love it or hate it, it's one of those legendary places known the world over. The place is full of music, culture and characters. I'm after country, old school Texas, honky tonks and I want pedal steel, Lone Star beer and BBQ.

Snow in Dallas derails our flight to Austin so we re-arrange our plans and fly to Houston. Molly and I drive from Houston to Austin. Half way through the 165 miles the landscape gets hilly and beautiful. The rolling hills are populated with scattered scrub oaks and ornately gated ranches with cows and long horns filling out the vistas. The long horn cattle are a sight to see.Their horns must be 5 feet from tip to tip. You'd think they would put each other's eyes out!

Closer to Austin we go through the Piney Woods, populated with pines, prickly pear cactus and palmetto. I enjoyed the drive, it gave us a sense of context instead of just dropping into Austin like cultural paratroopers.

After we check into our hotel we dine at The Shady Grove and have some chicken fried chicken and a margarita. Ahhhhh. Later we go up to 6th Street to see the Dropkick Murphys at Stubbs. The Dropkicks are a Boston Irish punk band but what the hell. I'll start my honky tonk tour tomorrow. When we walk up to the entrance we find the show is sold out! Lucky for us though the band is playing in Stubbs backyard so we can hear the band just fine. We stay for a few songs. It turns out a lot of music venues are outdoors in back patios or in big fenced in outdoor venues. Austin weather allows outdoor living, dining and rocking out. After a few songs we wander up historic 6th Street. It's amazing.

There are clubs, cafes, restaurants and tattoo parlors in every façade for a seven block stretch and EVERY place has a live band. Wow. And every band is different. Don't think about trying to classify Austin music. It's a global music scene. You'll find jazz, blues, country, rock, alternative, hip hop. Very cool. We duck into a reggae bar called Flamingo Cantina. I order a couple Red Stripe's and we move to the chank a chank beat with the rest of the crowd before this morning's 3:00 AM wakeup call catches up with us. Spent, we catch a cab back to the hotel and crash hard for the night.

Molly's off to work the next day (Saturday). I meet two friends. We meet them at their house in the University district where we eat fallen pecans off the lawn. We tour their house and the neighborhoods of Austin. The city neighborhoods are gentrifying. One story bungalows are being fixed up or are being replaced by beautiful craftsman style houses or more ambitious modern designs. It's sad for them to see old Austin changing and going away but exciting for me to see so many cool houses being built.

With our stomach's rumbling we head to a South Austin restaurant called Curras Grill "The Mother of All Mex". We sit on the front deck and soak up the sun taking in our vitamin D. I strongly recommend the COCHINITA PIBIL. The menu says it's "The foremost traditional dish of Yucatan. Pork leg marinated & then cooked in a banana leaf. Served with rice, black beans & plantains. The way the marinated pork and beans taste against the plantains is heaven and the way the sun felt to Bostonian' s escaping winter was nirvana.

That evening (Saturday) we meet friends again at the Hotel San Jose on South Congress Ave before we go honky tonking at the Broken Spoke.

Walking into the San Jose I think we've just been transported to LA. There's a beautiful courtyard with tables and seating evenly camped out. Smartly dressed sophisticated types talk and laugh while sipping wine. The aqua light streaming up from an in-ground pool reflects on the bamboo "walls" and pergolas that enclose the space giving us a cozy setting under outdoor heat lamps. This is the first time I experience the ying yang of Austin. The kind of ying yang that's perfect for me. I can have Chateauneuf de Pape or a Lone Star beer, a cappuccino or cowboy coffee, the ballet or the rodeo. It's a potpourri of culture. Speaking of which...off to the Broken Spoke!

If you died and went to heaven this is the honky tonk you'd find there. From the outside the Broken Spoke is a squat barn sitting back from a dusty dirt parking lot underneath a beautiful 60 foot tall old growth oak. It has an "old timey" front porch that's broken down and inviting. The building is basically a 100 foot square "chicken shed". There's a front room filled with neon signs, tables and booth seating, a pool table and one side of the bar. Behind the front room there is a huge dance floor. Probably 35" x 60'. The stage is at the far end opposite the back side of the bar. On either side of the dance floor are matching seating areas 20' wide by 60' long filled with gingham covered tables and populated by real cowboys, sexy cowgirls, old timers and hipsters. The building opened in 1964 and I don't think it's been touched since. The ceiling peaks about 1 foot above the singer's head and slopes down so it's only about 2 inches above most heads in the seating areas. The ceiling itself is insulation between the studs held up by chicken wire and in other areas it's falling down, water stained 1 foot square ceiling tile. The floors are wood, plywood and linoleum in the front room. The band tonight is Dale Watson. Dale plays straight ahead old school country. The band is made up of Dale on electric guitar and vocal, a bass player, a pedal steel player, a fiddler and a drummer.

There's about 500 people in here and we are all having the time of our lives. I'm drinking Lone Star, I'm drinking Shiner Bock, I'm drinking Bohemian, I'm drinking whatever local beer I can find. In between I'm learning the Texas Two Step and showing those cowboys how to! Molly is embarrassed. lol!! Dale is singing his own originals but he also rips into Bob Wills western swing, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash songs. Not to let my feet, ears and parched palette have all the fun I order a famous Broken Spoke Chicken Fried Steak to get my stomach into the action. What's a chicken fried steak? It's a steak, breaded like fried chicken and deep fried...then it's covered in a creamy gravy. Hello heart attack...hey, that sounds like a country song! :)

While we're waiting for our chicken fried steak we sneak into a room called "The Tourist Trap". It's packed with pictures of people who've played at the 'Spoke; Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, Dale Watson, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Ernest Tubbs, Roy Acuff, Hank Thompson, Tex Ritter, Ray Price, Kitty Wells, Grandpa Jones and George Strait. Along with other assorted memorabilia it's truly a museum of Texas country music. Very cool, very historic. For me I feel like I'm visiting the CBGB's of Austin. As we tuck into our chicken fried steaks the girls take turns dancing with real Texas cowboys. I feel as if I've been transported back in time about 40 years. More actually. I feel like I'm in a Back to the Future movie and I'm in an old Texas dance hall in 1940 or 1920.

Walking back to the car through the dusty parking lot the hanging, swinging and cracked Broken Spoke sign winks good night to us. I tip my hat to this living legend and it's incredible hospitality.

Sunday AM we breakfast at Las Manitas on Congress St. The façade is a non descript store front but we walk in to find a packed interior. With no seating available up front we are sheparded through the bustling kitchen to the back patio. My head swivels like Linda Blair as we traverse the kitchen. Tortillas are being slapped in the grill, tamales are being prepared, eggs, beans, rice are cracked, beaten and stirred. Dishwashers keep pans in rotation and waiters flow though the pick-up lines like Mexican Hat Dancers.

The smell makes my stomach rumble with anticipation. The back patio is a cobbled together room with plank walls and a corrugated plastic green and white ceiling. Black netting hangs under it. I imagine it's to further dampen the heat from the sun in the warm months? Wisteria vines climb up a lone pole to cover parts of the roof. The patio is about 20 x 40 feet filled with picnic tables all cocked at different angles from the uneven floor. We get coffee's and order Spicy Huevos a la Mejicana. Quickly we have plates with two eggs scrambled with fresh tomatoes, onions, ranchero sauce, chile serrano, refried beans & two tortillas in front of us. Awesome.

After breakfast Molly's off to work again but I'm off to Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon for Chicken Shit Bingo. Guess who's the house band? Dale Watson and his Lone Stars. The same band that played the Broken Spoke last night.

Ginny's is a small saloon that gets packed like sardines as the day progresses. Walking in the front door the bar is about 20 feet wide and 45 feet long. Immediately to your right is a table set up with crock pots full of hot dogs and chili. Buns and shredded cheese are available so patrons can make their own complimentary chili dogs. I had one straight away.

To the left is a 3x5 foot chicken cage that completely covers the pool table under it. The floor of the chicken cage is marked off with a grid. Each square of the grid is numbered. It costs $2.00 to bet on a square. Three times during the day the chicken gets put in the cage we all watch to see where the chicken shits. If it shits on your number you win up to $200.00 bucks! Down the left side of the room is the bar, beer only, and straight back in the right hand corner is the where the band has set up. We've inadvertently joined the honky tonk circuit.

I recognize a lot of people from the Broken Spoke last night. We make new friends and listen to Dale and his Lone Stars work the room. It feels like a gathering of family. There's no cover charge. Every time the band takes a break they pass a hat to get offerings for their daily bread. This is the church of the Little Longhorn Saloon. The crowd gets large enough to spill out the back into the parking lot. There's a speaker out back with the bikers, lawn chairs and groups of gathered friends stacking pyramids of cold Lone Star six packs. We stay in this Lone Star state of mind for hours. Can you give me a "Hell yeah"? Can you give me a "Heeya"? Gawt Damn that was fun. (Gotta say gawt, I was instructed that you can't take the Lord's name in vain)

Where do you go from Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon? How about Uncle Billy's for Brew and Que. Uncle Billy's is a micro brew and BBQ joint. It's new and modern/yuppy but VERY good with quality beer and Q. We ordered every meat they had and split it family style. We had BBQ turkey, chicken and pork (whole and pulled) and spicy Eldin sausages. I ordered the beer sampler set. I was partial to the Organic Amber. We sat outside again under warming heaters enjoying the early evening.

After dinner, on a tip from someone at Ginny's Longhorn Saloon I'm off to The Continental tonight (Sunday) to see Hey Bale. Once again the place is packed. Austin IS the live music capital of the world. And once again it's not just 21-25 year old kids out bar hopping. This is a diverse crowd of cowboys and hipsters, men and women, from 21 to 90 yrs old enjoying the band and of course dancing. Half the room is full of two steppers with wide smiles and sweat beaded foreheads. I see a lot of familiar faces from the "honky tonk circuit" I've been traveling in. Hey Bale is another country band. They are a five piece. Electric guitar, drums, acoustic guitar, stand up bass and keyboard. The guitar player rocks. His fingers run over that guitar like thunder AND lightning. We last until midnight. Even the tequila can't keep me awake.

Monday we ride herd around Austin in our car. We pop into Allen's Boots and Uncommon Objects on South Congress St. I find a great old Album my Papa used to play on the HiFi called Songs of the West recorded by the Norman Luboff Choir. God I remember listening to that and looking at the picture on the album cover. It pictured two cowboys watching over a herd of cattle in a quintessentially western landscape. What a fantasy for a kid. My heart jumped when I saw that. What a blast from the past. I paid $10.00 bucks for it and I don’t even have a turntable anymore!

That album may have been my first introduction to cowboy music (Western music). I remember the first time I really got turned onto Country music was at "The Fiddlers Picnic" in Upstate New York. I never forgot that. I remember a big stage with bands playing but even better was the jam sessions people were having in the fields next to their parked cars. They were more intimate and as a kid I could get closer to them. Anyway I digress. We head west of Austin next and find ourselves at Mozart's Coffee Roasters on Lake Austin.

We are definitely not on the honky tonk circuit anymore. This is a beautiful stone, brick and timber building on the water. The Colorado river has been damned and turned into Lake Austin. We have a cappuccino and while away some time watching other patrons work. Everyone has a laptop in here. My partner in crime, Will, talks to the counter girl about our adventures yesterday at Ginny's and Chicken Shit Bingo. She looks at him like he has two heads! I laugh out loud. We're not in honky tonk land anymore. We're sitting in a greenhouse room looking at the back side of a damn. The lake is bounded by wooded hills, lakeside homes and docks. Out in front of Mozart's is the Oyster Bay Marina. This looks like the place to be in warm weather. Right now it's very tranquil.

Loaded with a shot of caffeine I think "Go West Old Man". Humming "Happy Trails" to myself we giddy-up out of Austin's West Lake neighborhood and beyond to Lake Travis. The goal is to get into the hill country and out the other side. The drive is beautiful and fun. The road becomes like a rollercoaster and I feel the weight and loss of gravity through the ups and downs and fast curves. It looks a bit like California with the houses tucked in and perched on the hills but with a completely different landscape of trees and grasses. At times with the sandy soil and scrub trees it feels like Cape Cod to us too.

The west of Austin with the lakes and hills are the "high rent district". The houses are big and beautiful. Austin, besides being the "Live Music Capital" is also the capital of Texas, home to the University of Texas and a high tech center so there's some money floating around here. I take and unscheduled turn to follow a sign to Hippie Hollow and we end up on a high hill at a beautiful location sporting an artful watering hole called Oasis on Lake Travis. The Oasis is the spawn of a restless and creative mind.

The building is an interesting stone "castle" filled with sculpture and features cascading decks out the front that all face west 400 feet above lake Travis and offer the best sunset in Texas. On a good night I'm sure there's upwards of a thousand margarita sippers perched up there enjoying the day's end. Hipppy Hollow turned out to be a park. Empty the day we turned up but an internet search showed it to be an internationally famous clothing optional nudist park. In Texas? Who knew?

Our last evening in Austin and the girls are done with cowboy cooking and greasy spoons. We convene at a place on 2nd St called Cru. It's a wine bar. We try a variety of wines and share some stone fired pizzas. I have one last trick up my sleeve however. Molly's exhausted from a long day but up for a night cap.

We cab it to a place called the Mean Eyed Cat. It's a Johnny Cash themed nightspot created in an old chain saw store. In fact it was the location of a few scenes from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 and 2. The place is a great example of funky Austin. The painted exterior is worn and sun faded into a fine shabby chic patina. The inside is designer shabby chic too with Johnny Cash paraphernalia and images everywhere. The juke box blasts honky tonk and rock music always circulating back to a Cash song. I ask about the name Mean Eyed Cat. It turns out it's the name of a Johnny Cash song. In need of a soundtrack behind our ice cold Dos Equis I put a dollar into the juke.

The bar is full of talkative friendly types. Young professionals, tattooed biker types and college boys. The long haired bandana'd bartender is chatty as well. The bar fills the center of the main room like a square hole in a donut. To the left of the bar is a front parlor with a crew shooting pool and if you walk around the bar and out the back door you find yourself in the outdoor patio lit with festival lights and filled with tables, chairs and picnic tables. A serving table has ample portions of taco fixings and tamales for the taking. Overseeing the entire affair is a beautiful old growth oak. Truth be told we went to the bar to see if we could find a Johnny Cash souvenir for our son. We did, a Mean Eyed Cat T-shirt.

The stars at night - are big and bright
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The prairie sky - is wide and high
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The sage in bloom - is like perfume
Deep in the heart of Texas.
Reminds me of - the one I love
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The cowboys cry - ki-yip-pie-yi
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The rabbits rush - around the brush
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The coyotes wail - along the trail
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The doggies bawl - and bawl and bawl
Deep in the heart of Texas.

Austin rocks and it rolls
Deep in the heart of Texas.

Once wasn't enough for me. I'll be back.

Originally posted 3/18/08

Mudville 9 - New York City

2009-07-23T13:09:00.002-04:00

Bob Seger is singing to that smoky beat Down on Main St. I'm downing an ice cold Coors Light and the smell of Western NY fills my nose as the hot air pushes the eye-tearing smell of chicken wings up my nose!

Ahhh, the small pleasures of life.

As my mouth starts to burn, Boston rocks the room with Rock-n-Roll Band and if I close my eyes I'm back in college at Big Daddy's or the Falconcrest in 1982. REO Speedwagon and Springsteen take me to half a beer and an empty plate. ...and then, the mood ends.

The Eagles come on the jukebox. Ughhh...

I look up to see the traitor Johnny Damon hit a two run homer to put the Yankees ahead of the Red Sox. I'm jolted back to 2007. I'm in a little bar called the Mudville 9 on Chambers Street in NYC. Reality's a bitch but NYC loves classic rock-n-roll.

As Big Papi pops out I'm back in the groove draining my beer. The Kinks rock through Paranoia, Billy Squire tells me Lonely is the Night and the fake Springsteen Beaver Brown croons about The Dark Side. Heart wants to go Crazy on Me as I leave but I think I'll just go to bed. :)

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device 8/28/07

North Beach Serenade - San Francisco

2009-07-16T14:02:00.000-04:00

The cafe looked interesting enough from the outside to attract me to the door - and then I hear it. Six musicians like a sirens call pull me in. Four guitar players, one mandolin player and a slappin' stand up bass player. They're playing the early 60's classic, Runaway. No vocals, just a beautiful strumming, plucking and picking sound. I take a seat as freshly brewed coffee fills my nose. I'm in Caffe Trieste on the corner of Grant and Allejo in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.

As I sit there, - head a bobbin' - a silver haired guy drops a business card in my lap and moves on. I look at it. It says "Captain Democracy" and he's running for Mayor of San Francisco. He launches into a mild diatribe. "We started free thinking here" he says. Pointing to the ground. "Cal-Berkeley was the home of the atomic bomb, we need some creativity back in San Francisco! That's my platform." He turns and leaves. We all smile.

As Mr. Democray leaves the band breaks into O Sole Mio. The mandolin player is brilliant playing the lead but I can't help think of the recently deceased Luciano Pavarotti in this very Italian cafe.

Caffe Trieste itself is a 15' x40' coffee shop with a red floor and a brown ceiling. Painted murals of Italian scenery and black and white photographs of Italians compete with each other for attention on the wall. The coffee bar is to the right as you enter. I'm in the back of the small room in a cluster of mosaic tile tables and bent wood Italian cafe chairs that are all dis-arranged to make way for the six musicians serenading us. There's about twelve other people on the room with me. Heads bobbing, crossed legs and feet keeping time to the folky bluegrass jazz sound. This is JUST what I was hoping for when I walked up Grant St. A musical diversion. Something tuneful, not loud, raucous or rocking.

The mandolin player takes a break from playing lead and one of the guitar players takes over as the rest of the ensemble goes double time into a gypsy rhythm. Then they break, the guitars go pianissimo as the stand up bass player goes aerobic on his instrument pulling, slapping and furiously but tenderly pulling out bass notes....and then, ...a beat....silence, and the whole group kicks back in. The mandolin player takes control again, the tempo picks up, the volume grows and hearts leap to match the tempo and rhythms.

The coffee I ordered doesn't stop my eyelids from growing heavy. I throw a fiver into the tip jar and back my way out the door into the San Francisco night as the band breaks into a Brazilian samba. I sashay my way down the side walk. - Probably not a good thing for a straight male to do in San Francisco! :)

The band's name is Cafe American, they play Tuesday nights at Caffe Trieste.

Originally posted 9/15/07

Tribeca Tree House

2009-07-08T12:07:00.001-04:00

I'm at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the Tribeca section of New York. I'm looking down a vertigo view into my sitting area. I'm in a loft room. I feel like I'm in a tree house. My son Drew would love this. I have to climb up a ship's ladder to the sleeping loft, then I have to duck down when I get up here because the ceiling is only five feet tall. I'm five eleven. The room itself is only eight feet wide and 16 feet long. All and all pretty cozy though!

I've stayed in some funny places in NY. I once literally stayed under the stairs in a small room in a Murray Hill flop house. Very Harry Potter-esque.

Anyway I like the Cosmopolitan. The whole place has been redone. All the rooms are bright and clean, you just never know the size and shape you'll get. Mexicans seem to run the place. They are always so nice and cordial. The rooms are clean and it's the best price/value to be had in lower Manhattan.

There's a Starbucks on the first floor and better yet there's an old time soda shop/candy store too that serves a great breakfast.

The hotel is on the corner of W. Broadway and Chambers St. A walk north up W. Broadway will bring you to variety of places to eat. Asian, Mexican, French, Argentinian. I frequently haunt Circle Rouge, a fine French restaurant with good steak frites and Cotes du Rhone. Mmmm.

Close by is a lounge called Bubbles. If I'm bored it's a good place to pop into and listen to whatever quartet of musicians they have playing that night.

Anyway, my "tree house" room was the most surprising yet at the Cosmopolitan. I'm looking forward to future stays.

Side note - always ask for a room off the street. The street can be noisy until late and starts again early when the garbage trucks and nearby construction starts.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device 5/23/07

San Francisco: Weekend Getaway

2009-06-29T09:31:00.006-04:00

Wed, Jun 24, 2009

A silver haired guy walks up and drops a business card in my lap as four guitar players, a mandolin player and a slappin’ stand up bass kick out a bluegrass version of the ’50s classic, Runaway. It says “Captain Democracy” and he’s running for Mayor of San Francisco. He launches into a mild diatribe.

“We started free thinking here,” he says, pointing to the ground inside Caffe Trieste in North Beach. “Cal-Berkeley was the home of the atomic bomb; we need some creativity back in San Francisco! That’s my platform.”

The crowd nods approvals. He turns and leaves.

Welcome to San Francisco

Welcome to San Francisco, that exotic city of hills where east meets west, high tech lives with crunchy granola and bohemian culture births movements and culture known around the world. The Beats, the Hippies and the Summer of Love flowered here as well as music from the Grateful Dead to The Dead Kennedys. The cities fabled attractions are seen on countless postcards and TV programs; Fisherman’s Warf, Pier 39, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and the famed cable cars. But we’ve done the tourist trail on previous trips. This time we’re exploring neighborhoods.

To read the whole aticle go to http://travelblog.viator.com/san-francisco-weekend-getaway/

Brooklyn Blues

2009-06-24T10:00:00.001-04:00

I should be on a train headed north at 100 mph. But instead I'm looking for hotel rooms, bummed to see that Manhattan is completely sold out! The only room I can find is at a Howard Johnson's in a dubious part of Brooklyn. I'm confident it's a dodgy area. I call a friend who used to live in Brooklyn. He confirms my worst suspicions. He says not to stay there. He's pretty sure it's a bad area. I knew it. The photos on the website say " bad area". I spend another hour on Orbitz, Hotel.com LastMinuteDeal.com, Travelocity and other sites to no avail. I'm headed to Brooklyn tonight.

This puts me in a depressed mood. I've read all the press about how good Brooklyn is these days but to me Brooklyn is The Warriors, The Lords of Flastbush, the racial riots in Bensenhurst, the Bay Ridge rumbles of Saturday Night Fever or the Russian mafia in Coney Island. It's dangerous and a new frontier. I'm nervous and anxious to be staying in Brooklyn. It's big unknown. But me, being me, drawn to discovery and my undying wanderlust getting the better of me and I closed my laptop and headed for the subway before it got dark. Yeah the subway. I wasn't going to pay cab fare all the way to Brooklyn and I was definitely not going straight to the hotel. The longer I waited to go there the better. If it was in a bad neighborhood the less time I was there the better.

I looked at the map and decided to find dinner in Park Slope. Park Slope is the "new" Brooklyn. It's full of middle and high income types. My plan was to get off at Army Square and do a walkabout. Most of the professional hipster white people got off here so I followed them off the train, and I literally kept following them. I had no idea where I was and they obviously did as they walked at a brisk pace away from me. One block down the herd ducked right down a side street and I found myself in an incredibly handsome brownstone neighborhood. It's dusk and getting dark but I could tell the buildings and neighborhood were well maintained. Single men and women, couples, single mothers with babies in strollers or snugglies strolled the sidewalks. Many Brownstones had beautiful front gardens and patios with groomed plantings facing the street. This is my favorite type of urban neighborhood. Urbane, green, safe and beautiful.

I asked someone where the closet area for restaurants was. He directed me one block down to 7th Ave. Sure enough the whole street was lined with commercial shops at street level. Looking for comfort I stopped at a chicken and barbecue joint and had a Bronco sandwich. It was savory and huge! Grilled chicken breast with melted cheeses, peppers and onions on a big ol' kaiser roll.. As I sat there devouring the nosh and getting all anxious about going to the hotel the local cops and fireman came in and ordered Bronco sandwiches too. I knew I made the right choice!

Now I'm getting tired so I flag down a cab. I'm only 15 big blocks from the hotel so it can't be too bad right. Park Slope Brooklyn with it's mutli-million dollar brownstones isn't too bad (sic) so how bad could Crown Heights be?

I tell the cabbie where I'm going. He laughs. Why's he laughing? Oh boy I think. "You staying there tonight"he says and laughs again. Oh shit. What does he know that I don't. He says he just came from there. The cab garage is near there. He wants to head into Manhattan. OK I think. He must just be laughing at himself; at his folly of trying to get to Manhattan while I'm sending him back to where he started. At least that's what I tell myself. I watch Brooklyn drift by out the window. It looks fine. We go through a hasidic area. I think oh, maybe I'm heading into a Jewish area. I look at the map I printed from Google maps and see the hotel is near a Jewish rehab center. Yeah that's it, the hotel is probably Jewish run and full of Jews coming to visit their infirmed loved ones. Soon, no more Jews were out the window. The architecture started to degrade from stately brownstones to homely apartment buildings to three story walk ups to dilapidated one story brick squat houses with rusty old cars and debris in the yard. I'm not in Kansas anymore. I'm on the border of an area called Crown Heights. I'm at the hotel.

I sign in at the desk wondering what the hell I just got myself into.

I get on the elevator and two huge black women get on. They ask me "Are you staying here"? I say yes. " You meeting somebody"? I say no. " You want a girl in your room? I say no thanks and think, oh shit, where the hell am I? The bigger girl hits the smaller one and says " What if he was a cop." I think oh shit!

I pressed third floor in the elevator but it goes down not up. I think, oh shit! The elevator fills with to the brim. I'm the only white dude in there. I exchange eye contact with people in the elevator trying to be cool. Most people get off at the lobby. I think, maybe it's a church group? They look like a church group. One plump 50-ish gentlemen stays on the elevator. He's very well spoken. I think, maybe he's a minister? Yeah this is probably a Christian hotel. The girls on the elevator proceed to ask him. " Are you staying at this hotel? Are you meeting somebody or are you alone? He looks at the big girl and says "you know you're very beautiful". Oh shit I think. Floor three dings. I squeeze my way through the love fest and take off down the hall looking for my room. I duck in, look in the bathroom, the closet, under the bed. All clear. I bolt the door, pull the security hardware to latch it and push a chair against the door. At this point I don't care if I get burned up trying to get out of my room in a fire, I just want to make sure no-one is getting in!

The room was fine, relatively new and clean. It was furnished with inexpensive materials. Plastic tub/shower, veneer woods, serviceable carpet. There was a big red stain on it, I was sure was blood! No sign of bugs or cockroaches.

After watching the NY nightly news full of murders, missing persons and dismembered bodies I turn down the sound and try to fall asleep in my fortified cocoon.

Believe it or not I slept well. I woke up the next morning with the intention of getting outta there before most of the world woke up. I figured hookers, drug dealers, thieves and thugs would never be up at 6:00 AM!

I get down to the the lobby and I get a warm good morning from a young corn rowed kid. I enter the morning breakfast area. Christian radio fills the airwaves. Maybe it was a church group? An animated breakfast host entertains a nice southern family having breakfast.

I have the desk clerk, who was sleeping at the front desk, call me a cab. An unmarked car comes so I make him guarantee me a price before we drive away. Not that I could do anything about it. The guys was the size of a house, middle linebacker material.

I cab it back to Tribeca which 15 years ago gave me the same anxious feeling I had in Brooklyn when it was a desolate, low income neighborhood. Now, the shined up buildings with their awnings and blooming flowers said welcome back to your comfort zone. I sit down, have a cup-o-joe and begin to relax again....then I start thinking about when I'm going to go back to Brooklyn again.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Originally posted 5/12/07

TravelBlogs.com

2009-06-19T11:37:00.006-04:00

Hi all. I'm featured on TravelBlogs.com Check it out.http://www.travelblogs.com/blogs/page/2

Thanks Travelblogger and Hi fellow travelers.

London - Off to Hogwarts

2009-06-16T11:57:00.004-04:00

Funny picture my buddy just sent me. We were in London's Kings Cross Station at Platform 9 3/4 where Harry Potter always leaves for Hogwarts. I did take a running leap at the wall, suitcases and all....but I bounced off, much to the amusement of commuters, tourists and myself. :)

Things to do in New Orleans

2009-06-02T20:15:00.008-04:00

Hey all - here's a New Orleans piece I did for Viator.com.

Bourbon Street was like a carnival midway that first night....with strippers. The street was full of life with a surging crowd, dirt & litter under our feet, spilt beer and lithe nearly naked bodies standing in doorways eyeing and enticing potential customers.

We watched a Cajun band inside Tropical Isle from the Bourbon Street banquette .....

For the whole post click here. http://travelblog.viator.com/new-orleans-things-to-do/

New Orleans Cities of the Dead

2009-05-09T08:13:00.037-04:00

We were on the streets at 6:30 one morning. I love being out in the quiet. Bird song our only accompaniment down Royal Street.

After coffee at the Royal Blend coffee shop we looped around the hushed Quarter, strolled along the muscular river, turned up Canal Street and hopped a streetcar to Basin Street where we disembarked for St Louis #1, New Orleans' oldest cemetery. It began consuming residents in 1789.

You've seen these cemetery's on TV and movies. All the tombs are above ground because the water table is 5 inches below ground and anything you put under it rots and floats off. At 220 years old the cemetery is a model of derelict beauty. Well kept memorials and vaults watched over by blanche contrapposto angels are only highlighted accents in a wash of crumbling decrepitude.

In the morning you don't get the dark shadows that elicit mind games and conjured phantasms but I gotta tell you entering this ghostly realm was still freaky. I was very hesitant to go too deep. One reason was the supernatural, the other was the Iberville Housing Project next door. We could either be pulled into oblivion by the ghosts of New Orleans or be mugged and killed by some desperate crack head. We slowly entered anyway pulled by the decrepit beauty of the tombs and the same curiosity that killed the cat. Plus I figured that by 6:00 AM the criminal element was tired out from their night's endeavors and went to bed.

Here's some video from our hesitant ramble through the cadaver condos.

Offerings of beads, candles, pages of books, feathers....and what does XXX mean scrawled on the face of certain tombs? People still believe in Marie Laveau's Voodoo Queen power and to conjure Marie's powers you need to mark her tomb with XXX in chalk or brick, rub the ground three times with your foot, knock three times (to wake the dead) and make a wish. Yikes.

These above ground cemetery's are known as the Cities of the Dead. St Louis #1 cemetery spans just one square block, but is the resting place of over 100,000 dead. That's a city sized amount of dead people.

In a city that seems to disregard the concept of linear time and wears all it's histories at once, these cemetery's are cool to visit. From their beehive oven tombs I'm sure these densely packed denizens still hold court over their beloved New Orleans.

I aint afraid a no ghosts!
Who you gonna call?

New Orleans - Joie de vivre

2009-05-06T21:15:00.008-04:00

The music of the French Quarter Festival was amazing (as you can see from my previous post) but away from the stages the city of New Orleans itself kept us captive. The street life was convivial, the food was succulent, the drinks were dangerously tasty and the people were full of the joy of living. We explored the Quarter then spun in concentric circles like whirling dervishes radiating out to Magazine Street, St Charles Avenue, Uptown, the Garden District, Carrollton and Mid-City. I'll list some cool places we patronized in my next post but for now check out the vibe that emanates from that crescent curve on the shores of the mighty Missisippi in the city we call the Big Easy.

Enjoy the music. It's the Rebirth Brass Band doing "Fell Like Funkin' It Up".

New Orleans, St Louis Cathedral

2009-05-04T17:34:00.006-04:00

We were walking up Orleans Avenue to Royal Street late one night and were met with this spectral image. Standing watch over the back gardens of St Louis Cathedral, Jesus takes up mightier heights when the sun sets to tend the Babylonian flock of quenched revelers roaming the Quarter and flooding up & down Pirates Alley.

New Orleans - French Quarter Festival 09

2009-04-30T17:13:00.027-04:00

Who hasn't felt the pull of New Orleans? The Jazz, the Cajun music, the food, the crawdads, the Mardi Gras Indians?

There's a mystic quality to this unique city. It's French influenced in an Anglo centric country. It's Catholic and bawdy in an American South full of conservative Christians. Back in the day it was the stomping grounds of the debauched pirate Jean Lafitte and he'd still fit right in today.

With the French Quarter Festival happening I was hoping to see some good Cajun music and Dixieland jazz. I got way more than I hoped for. Music is like breathing here. It everywhere and it's good, really good, and when you breathe it in you feel alive.

You also inhale slices of another time. It's an ancient and modern mix of culture; like being in a Harry Potter movie. It's a gumbo of time periods and cultures but it isn't a melting pot. Nothing is melted or diluted here. It's cultures and time periods reveal themselves to you as the veils of time peel away. French, Creole, Spanish, Caribbean, Haitian, Piracy, Voodoo, Jazz, Zydeco, Outlaws, Literary Giants, Ghosts, Vampires, Swamps, the Mississippi. They all co-mingle in a thick hot swampy jumble. Let's call it a Jambalaya :)

Jazz was invented in New Orleans by Buddy Bolden. The legendary inimitable Louis Armstrong stormed the world from New Orleans. Dr. John, Professor Longhair, the Marsalis brothers, Harry Connick Jr, The Neville Brothers, Fat's Domino and a multitude of great musicians hail from this legendary music town.

Early on I got an appreciation of brass music from my Father the trumpet player. As I watched the wailing expressions blown by New Orleans street musicians my mind took me back to my own brass band days and my Father's fire dept bands. I'm hoping he was on my shoulder experiencing this spectacle with me. God knows he would have loved New Orleans.

But enough words, check this out. It's a bit long for an Internet video but you gotta see the breadth of music the French Quarter Festival provides...for free. Dig it!

I'd never seen Mardi Gras Indians before so on Saturday night we went to see the funky 101 Runners at Waterfront Park. They were great. What a spectacle and they came down in the crowd where we all participated in their mad bacchanalia. Check it out. In the middle of the video they do a cover of the Grateful Dead's Fire On The Mountain. The crowd went wild.

Last but not least are Washboard Chaz and Doc Houlind. I loved these two moments in time.

We saw the Washboard Chaz Blue's Trio at The Spotted Cat. The Spotted Cat is a club in the Faubourg Marigny district which is just a short walk east of the French Quarter. Frenchmen Street is a great street full of music clubs where the locals go. Check it out next time you're in N'awlins. I don't have a lot of tape of Chaz because if you watch you'll see him wave me off to stop filming. The group was tight. Chaz kept a mean rhythm with his washboard. Along the bottom of it he has a wood block, two tin cans and a bell for additional percussion. Teamed with a driving bluesy Dobro player and a screaming, chugging and churning harmonica jockey they rocked it hard. I went online when I got back and bought a CD. Get one!

We saw Doc Houlind's Revival Jazz Band at Preservation Hall. The band was excellent but Preservation Hall is a star in it's own right.

From the Hall's website;
Preservation Hall is located in the French Quarter, just three blocks from the Mississippi River. The Hall has served many functions over the years. Originally built as a private residence in 1750, the hall has evolved into a tavern, inn, photo studio and an art gallery. The inside of the hall contains portraits of the musicians who first filled it with the beautiful sounds of New Orleans Jazz.

Preservation Hall opened its doors in 1961. The hall was created as a sanctuary, to protect and honor New Orleans Jazz which had lost much of its popularity to modern jazz and rock n roll. Allan and Sandra Jaffe, the hall’s founders, wanted a place where New Orleans musicians could play New Orleans Jazz, a style, they believed, should not disappear.

Today, over 40 years later, the hall is still going strong. On any given night, the hall is filled to capacity with people eager to hear New Orleans jazz played by veteran musicians in their 70’s and 80’s and younger musicians learning and embracing music that is both sweet and very beautiful.

Listen to Doc Houlind and you'll hear that kicking Rag Time Dixieland sound is still alive! Doc's band is from Denmark but you'd think they grew up right here in New Orleans. It's a testament to the global appeal of this music.

One thing I really got a kick out of was a lot of bands didn't have a bass player, instead they had a Sousaphone. They use Sousaphones as basses down here!

I'm sucked in. New Orleans has captivated me. I've fallen under it's spell. My friend John told me I have the "disease". If I do, I don't want to be cured...I just want to go back.

Next posts - We explore, eat, drink and visit the grave of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

Summertime

2009-04-28T18:39:00.005-04:00

It's 87 degrees. Even though it's only late April it feels like summertime, especially when I hear the far off fat sound of a Harley exhaust float in with the breeze through an open window.

Yellowstone, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and a Grizzly Cub! Day 4

2009-04-15T10:07:00.003-04:00

Day 4. This is our last day in Yellowstone. We pack and have breakfast at the diner in the Canyon Village General Store where we swap picture taking responsibilities with a nice French family.

Molly's jazzed about taking a hike before we drive down to Jackson Wyoming. It's going to be a long day. Dylan and I are not so into it but the "boss" has spoken so we're dressed to hike.

We head down the road to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and don't we come across a Grizzly Cub!

Having come up a steep incline he crosses the road in front of us and keeps moseying uphill. Amazing. That's the second grizzly we've seen in 4 days. Third if you count the spec we saw through a rangers binoculars. It's thrilling all over again.

I'm already not too excited to hike this morning and now we've just encountered a bear roaming around where we're supposed to be hiking! I counter that maybe we should skip the hike this morning. We don't have bear bells, we don't have bear spray, we're simply not prepared to be hiking in bear country. Mind you this is the same group (my family) who all agreed we would not swim with sharks in the Bahamas and what happened when the opportunity arose to swim where there are sharks? They immediately strapped on the snorkel gear. I stood there for a minute contemplating a scene where I watch my wife and kids get munched while I watch the trickles of blood helplessly from shore ... didn't feel good, so I pulled on my snorkel gear too. You know where this is going. We got to the South Rim trail head and hiked. :)

It was a beautiful day and the river, as it's been all along, was gorgeous! The power of the water was scary. It moved at a NASCAR pace past rocks and over falls big and small. White water highlighted the liquid sapphire. If someone fell into the raging river I don't imagine they'd last long. They be tossed around and beat up like a rag doll.

The South Rim trail was well worn. The river was on our left and woods on our right. Every 100 feet or so we were drawn back down to the river's edge to take in another transcendent scene.

Here we are hiking the trail.

When you get to the end of the trail you are at Artist Point. When the first Europeans set sights on Yellowstone and told tales of it's wonders they were not well received. The tale tellers were thought to be exaggerating. The next wave of explorers brought artists to document the discoveries and the paintings still looked unreal, ... exaggerated. Here's Thomas Moran's painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

And here's a photograph of the real place. You can see the artists took no creative liberty. It really looks like this!

Knocked out by the bounty of Yellowstone again we reluctantly say goodbye.

But...we're very excited to be traveling to The Grand Tetons to luxuriate in swanky Jackson Wyoming. See you there

Yellowstone, Lamar Valley. Day 3

2009-04-09T10:24:00.011-04:00

Day 3 in Yellowstone and we moved up to Canyon Village where we stayed at the Canyon Lodge Cabins to be close to the Lamar Valley and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

The cabins were fine. They were basic but clean. The shower was so small however I could barely move my arms to wash myself. :) We didn't plan this move up to Canyon Village in advance though so we were just happy to have gotten a room. The landscape was different than down by Old Faithful and the geyser fields. It was nice to have a cabin in a bit of woods. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere even though the big Canyon Lodge and a "village" of restaurants, stores and a Yellowstone Museum were a short walk away.

From here we made our exploration of Lamar Valley. Lamar Valley, like Hayden Valley is a spectacular place to view wildlife. Located in the Northeast section of the park you can see elk, bison, osprey, bald eagles, antelope, moose, black bears, grizzlies and wolves.

It's also prime viewing for two prominent packs ... of humans. First is the herd of telescoped binocular humans who gather to watch for wolves in the early morning and evenings. Second are the scattered but ubiquitous fly fisherman. We didn't fish here but it made me want to come back and try. My mind's eye is burned with the vision of fly fisherman in their waders, thigh high in brilliant blue water performing their upper body ballet. Laid out behind them is a scene of such grandeur it's epic. A snaking river with a purple wash of rocks at the rivers edge framed by the yellows and greens of grasses and wildflowers. Buffalo graze in the middle ground and beyond them climbing walls of lodgepole pine and rocky granite peaks highlighted by the alpen glow of the westering sun.

I spied an envious scene at one point where a guy with an RV had parked in a turn-out viewing area. He was sitting in a lawn chair, legs extended and crossed in front of him, his body almost in a reclined position with a cap precariously balanced on his head to shade the sun. He had a coffee in one hand and down beside the lawn chair he had his thermos. There he sat, back to us, watching the Buffalo and the colors of the late day change. I wanted to join him. One day I will and sit quietly for hours, nursing my cup-o-joe, as the buffalo graze and the watchful eye of the young granite peaks watch back.

Lamar Valley is quite different than Hayden Valley. It's much hillier and the mountains feel closer, the valley is not as wide. We drove from west to east and the closer we got to the east entrance of the park the narrower the valley got and higher the peaks. It's very dramatic. I'm told coming into the park from the Northeast Entrance is an eye-popping experience as you drive through the Beartooth Highway. I think I'll try that next visit.

The valley is wide and grassy in it's western reaches. We drove west to east out of the Tower-Roosevelt area.

The eastern end of the valley gets very dramatic. This picture doesn't capture the scale.

We watched for wildlife but didn't see too much this day. We pulled over once where a ranger had a telescope trained on a spec of a grizzly bear having his lunch over a dead elk carcase. We also stopped to see the dry white bones of another elk that had been picked clean by the denizens of the Lamar Valley. The most prevalent animal we saw here was once again the Buffalo.

Lamar Valley has it's own herd of Buffalo. In 1907 28 bison were moved from Fort Yellowstone to the Lamar Valley to enhance the park's natural herd. These were plains bison, a distinct subspecies which differed from the park's native mountain bison. Who knew there were different species? Anyway the park herd is now a hybrid of the two subspecies and between Hayden Valley and Lamar Valley numbers about 4,000.

Here's some video we took in Lamar Valley.

When we got to the end of the valley we didn't exit the park. We turned around and drove back. We'd already driven about 50 miles that day, so we had another 50 to get back to our cabin. 30 miles back we stopped at the Roosevelt Lodge for dinner. As we entered the ranch a most western scene greeted us as a posse of horses and riders slowly came towards us trailing a plume of summer dust. Roosevelt Lodge was a very cool place. It's named after Teddy Roosevelt who came to this location to explore Yellowstone in 1904.

On the property there's a rustic log lodge with a big dining room, a country store and scattered cabins. This is very remote. It's a great place to stay for a back country experience. They offer horseback trail riding, stagecoach rides, chuckwagon outings and it's a perfect launching point for fly fishing. We sat on the front porch waiting for a table as the sun set savoring this pristine location. The view was across a wide valley and the far mountains went from green to orange to red to purple to black. I'm definitely staying here a couple days next visit. Our meal was great, the bar keep made us some amazing margarita's with and interesting twist on the salted rim...cayenne pepper. It added a nice kick.

Roosevelt Dining Room
Photo from Picasa web album of Diana Magor

We made our way back to Canyon Village in the dark. Molly made me drive. The road gets a little hairy over the Dunraven Pass, and to add a little coda to the day, we saw a coyote. I'm 90% sure it wasn't a wolf.. .even though I'd like to say it was. :)

To read about our three days in Yellowstone from the beginning start here. Day One - Yellowstone.

Yellowstone, Hayden Valley & Buffalo. Day 2

2009-04-06T15:50:00.019-04:00

Hayden Valley is a stunningly beautiful and wide valley in Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone River snakes it's way through the valley and entices in a way Eve would understand. The valley was long ago once part of Yellowstone Lake and it's moist sandy glacial sediment stops the encroachment of trees allowing for a beautiful vista.

When we arrived it was still early in the morning.

Gorgeous

The valley is one of the best places in Yellowstone to see bison, elk and the occasional grizzly bear. In addition there is an abundance waterfowl, including ducks, Canadian geese and pelicans. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me but it's true. There are pelicans in Yellowstone. Who knew? They're American White Pelicans. The only pelicans I've ever seen were in Florida or along the Gulf Coast but apparently American White Pelicans do their summer breeding on lakes throughout the northern Great Plains and mountains in the West.

Scattered along the valley too were my favorite. Buffalo, American Bison, or in the tongue of the Sioux, Tatonka. Once numbering from 60-100 million the Buffalo was almost hunted to extinction by the 1880's. At that time there were only a few hundred left. Today it's estimated there are about 350,000 Buffalo in North America.

The only continuously wild buffalo herd in the United States resides within Yellowstone National Park. This herd, now numbering about 4,000, is descended from a population of 23 mountain bison that survived the mass slaughter of the 1800s by hiding out in the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone Park.

These magnificent creatures are the largest mammals in Yellowstone National Park. Being strictly vegetarian they graze the grasslands and sedges in the meadows, foothills and high-elevation forested plateaus of Yellowstone. Males can weigh upwards of 1,800 pounds and females about 1,000 pounds. Both stand approximately six feet tall at the shoulder. They are literally as big as a small vehicle and can move with surprising speed. They can run as fast as 35 miles per hour and have the unexpected agility to leap over a standard barbed-wire fence.

Buffalo appear docile but between 1978 and 1992, nearly five times as many people in Yellowstone National Park were killed or injured by bison as by bears (12 by bears, 56 by bison). We could see the aggression. Starting the end of July and into August the Yellowstone buffalo converge on Hayden Valley for their annual rutting (mating) season. Competition between bulls for female cows gets intense. There's a lot of jockeying, posturing and grunting. Two bulls locked horns and went at each other right in front of us. They lowered their heads into each other maneuvering for position, kicking up dust and thundering downhill with the crack and crunching of tree limbs telegraphing the fight back up to us. When one of the buffaloes came back up the hill he was moving pretty fast...right at us. We ran for the car and jumped up on the roof!

Dylan, on the roof of the Jeep, a little wary of the buffalo.

Here's another video of buffalo swimming the Yellowstone River. A couple get swept away by the current!

We passed through the Hayden Valley multiple times in our visit to Yellowstone and we were always in awe of the buffalo.

Buffalo are one of the touchstones of ancient America. They are a symbol of the American West. They used to roam the great plains in unimaginable numbers. The plains and western mountains were America's Serengeti. It'd be nice to see that again. The plains States are losing population now and there is a movement afoot to let the land go back to natural prairie and create what would be called the Buffalo Commons where the natural flora and fauna could repopulate. I think that would be magical....and probably a HUGE tourist attraction.

It would have been one of the great tragedies of all time to lose one of North America's greatest animals. To see them in the wild like this in such a grandiose landscape is a great privilege and a little heaven on earth.

Next, another of the great valleys in Yellowstone. The magnificent Lamar Valley.

Yellowstone - Looking for Animals!

2009-04-03T16:07:00.017-04:00

I got everyone up at 5:30...in the morning! Uncivilized I know but I wanted and needed to get out early to spy the four legged bounty I'd heard inhabited Yellowstone.

Two days ago we were in The Black Hills of South Dakota. The Black Hills were a big surprise. They were so beautiful and there was abundant wildlife. We don't get to experience big game animals in Boston so I was hooked by the thrill. Like a drug addict I had to get another fix. I had to be out for prime time viewing.

...and so we pulled out of the parking lot at the Old Faithful Inn at 6:00 AM. It's cold. There's dew on the grass and car windows. The sun is showing it's pink crown to the east. We have entered an earthen landscape exhaling it's crystallized breath as the sun sends it's natal reds & oranges across the transient scene like footlights at a theater.

Wow.

Here we are driving past the Upper Geyser Basin and out onto the park road.

We drove north from the Old Faithful area towards Madison. For a while we're alone on the road floating through the lodgepole pines like 19th Century pioneer rafters traveling on pristine rivers. We pass Gibbon Falls on our way to Norris and turn towards Canyon Village were we immediately see two Elk. Cool! I was starting to think we might strike out seeing anything on this morning's safari.

Bolstered by the Elk we keep our eyes peeled and beyond all notions of luck we spy a Grizzly freakin' Bear! The bear is foraging in a meadow. A ranger pulls up to make sure bear and humans keep the proper distance but this is a magic moment. To see this majestic animal in it's natural habitat is affirmation of true wilderness. He is the occupant, we are the interloper. Many times I wanted to sit still and quiet in Yellowstone and let the pulse of the earth and nature fill me and revive me. Let it reintroduce me to the primal currents that flow through all living things, plant, animal & mineral. This was one of those times.

It's no wonder Native Americans worship Mother Earth with ancestoral generations having been suckled and nourished off the bounty & beauty of North America before we "tamed" it all.

We'd traveled about 42 miles this AM when we reached Canyon Village. Thrilled with our Grizzly sighting we head south and in front of the Canyon Village Lodge Cabins' see a big rack swaying back & forth as a Bull Elk has his breakfast.

Elk and Grizzly on video. Check it out.

As we start to make our way back south to the Old Faithful Inn we enter one of the big wildlife viewing areas in Yellowstone. The Hayden Valley. The Yellowstone River cuts through the center of the Hayden Valley and this is where one of the biggest herds of Buffalo in North America live...and we all know how I feel about Buffalo. I love them! It's the most magnificent animal we saw on our wild west road trip. They are incredibly majestic, broad shouldered and strong. A true American icon.

Next post - Hayden Valley and Buffalo!

Old Faithful, Yellowstone - Day 1

2009-04-01T14:06:00.009-04:00

Leaving Cody Wyoming on Rt 20 we made our way west. Adios cowboy country and hello mountain man terrain. We drove through a big gap in that continental vertical wall we call the Rocky Mountains and entered an alpine world leaving the great plains and arid prairies behind. Further on Buffalo Bill made his legendary presence known to us once again as we passed by his hunting camp. I had to stop in for a quick tour.

Buffalo Bill Cody's hunting lodge. The Sioux called it Pahaska Tepee, "Longhair's Lodge".

Further on we continued through tight forested valleys and over rushing streams. In the distance smoke plumes billowed and tilted in the calm wind while bands of US Forest Service fire rangers watched and monitored their leanings . Rt. 20 follows the North Fork of the Shoshone River through the scenic Wapiti Valley to the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. It's 56 miles from Cody to the East Entrance and before we knew it we were entering the park. With the sun at our back we drove through Sylvan Pass and entered a high plateau. This wasn't a high desert or prairie but a a giant lodgepole pine wooded valley surrounded by distant mountains. And upon further, discovery Yellowstone National Park turns out to be a giant ancient caldera!

The caldera measures about 34 mi by 45 mi. Geologists refer to it as the Yellowstone Supervolcano!The most recent lava flow occurred about 70,000 years ago. The last full-scale eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano happened about 640,000 years ago. Currently, volcanic activity is exhibited only via numerous geothermal vents scattered throughout the region, including the famous Old Faithful Geyser. And that's where we're headed now .... although it's a little unsettling to know we could be blasted to bits by a geologic time bomb!

As we continued towards Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake appeared on our left. I didn't realize it was so big. 136 square miles. At Fishing Bridge we got out of the car. Fishing Bridge spans the Yellowstone River where it drains Yellowstone Lake. If there is a prettier river in the entire world I haven't seen it. The crystal clear fast moving water reflected the blue of the sky and cast off shimmers and sparkles beckoning us down to the river's edge where we drank from the cool mountain run off. It was so clear you could see the rocks and bowing vegetation on the river bed. I desperately wanted to jump in but swimming was forbidden here and we had to keep rolling.

By the tip of the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake we turned directly west for another ten miles where we eventually drove up to the majestic Old Faithful Inn.

The lodge is a spectacular log and limb building with a stunningly massive (500-ton, 85-foot) stone fireplace in the middle of it. The inn is a prime example of the "Golden Age" of rustic resort architecture, a style which is also known as National Park Service Rustic. Initial construction was carried out over the winter of 1903-1904, largely using locally-obtained materials including lodgepole pine (the bark was later removed in 1940) and rhyolite stone. When the Old Faithful Inn first opened in the spring of 1904, it boasted electric lights and steam heat. The structure is the largest log hotel in the world; possibly even the largest log building in the world.

Molly took a tour of the lodge and was told the Old Faithful Inn originated the concept of Rustic Architecture. The tour guide obviously didn't know who she was talking to as Ms. New York State informed the tour guide that the Rustic Style appeared in the Adirondack Mountains in the 1870s, creating the style known as Adirondack Architecture and that this was the primary influence that park architecture modeled itself after the year 1900. ....that's right. You don't mess with the Great Camps. :) OK back to Yellowstone.

Main Lobby

Massive Fireplace

Second Floor lobby. To the left outside is the front deck.

Interior Hallway

Across from the Inn is Upper Guyser Basin. There are boardwalk paths through the guyser & mudpot fields. You MUST stay on the boardwalk. You definitely do not want to fall though the crusty earth anywhere into boiling water or mud!

There's one thing I gotta tell ya. It's a big secret they don't tell you about Yellowstone. It smells like rotten eggs. Yup. Rotten eggs. It can stink to high heaven sometimes. The geothermal areas reek of sulfur! It smells like the time my mother left eggs on the stove to boil and promptly fell asleep leaving the eggs to burn, fume and permeate everything in our house with that stinky rotten egg smell. Yuck. Still, you gotta go. It's one of the rare places on earth we can see the firey heart of mother earth manifest itself on the surface. Here's a video narrated by Drew as he tours the guyser fields.

Dylan & I went to watch Old Faithful go off. It was just he & I ...and about 1,000 tourists from all over the world. They show up in big buses, get out, watch the explosion, go to the gift shop and leave. :)

As the shadows stared to grow longer and the sky blended to yellow and orange in the west we headed to the front deck of the Inn. It's a second story deck, open to the sky, that overlooks Old Faithful. It was very relaxing. The air was clear & crisp. We drank Bayern and Moose Drool beer and met a group of about 10 Brits that I thought were Kiwi's. Interesting accents they had. They were riding motorcycles from Alaska to Nashville. "That's amazing" I said and asked how they could rent motorcycles in Alaska and drop them off down south. They said they didn't rent. It was cheaper to ship their own motorcycles to Alaska! That blew my mind. Of course the British Pound was worth 60 % more than the dollar in the summer of '08 so their money went a looong way.

Here we are on that luxurious porch.

Eventually we turned in. I can't remember why but we all got to laughing so hard in our room that we got in trouble from our neighbor. He banged on the door like he was trying to put his fist through it. I open it and he yelled at us. I blame Molly's cackle. We laughed a bit more at being yelled at and went to sleep. The goal was to be up at 5:30 AM the next morning to hunt for wildlife.

Would we see Bears, Elk, Buffalo? Click here to find out. Day 2 - looking for animals.

Follow Me

2009-03-30T13:42:00.004-04:00

Hey friends, foes, lurkers, fellow and budding travelers. Follow me by clicking the follow button in the right pane of my travel blog. http://blackberrytravelog.blogspot.com

You can follow from the Blog or Facebook.

Next up in April, New Orleans. The Big Easy. Laissez le bon temps rouler.

If you've been someplace cool let's swap stories. I'm feeling mortal. I gotta pack a lot in the next 30 years!

Best,

Bob

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Best Beer brewed in Rochester, NY

2009-03-27T09:14:00.000-04:00

Check out the third most award winning beer in America according to the Brewers Association. Genesee Cream Ale. At its annual Great American Beer Festival, the Brewers Association awards gold, silver and bronze medals to the best beers produced by hundreds of breweries in the US, from the largest to the micro-est.

Most highly decorated beer in America is Alaskan Smoked Porter (15 medals; 6 gold, 4 silver, 5 bronze), followed by New Belgium Abbey Belgian Style Ale (10 medals; 6 gold, 4 bronze) and Genesee Cream Ale from Rochester, NY, (10 medals; 2 gold, 5 silver, 3 bronze).

We called Genesee Cream Ale "The Green Death" in my college days. It gave you big time gas. I'm talking farts that you could see coming out your butt. Green mist would waft up and knock-out anyone in proximity. I was like Pepe' LePew. It wasn't good for picking up chicks.

It's fallen from favor in my home town of Rochester, NY. All the people I know there now drink Labatt's. They've gone Canadian. What's up with that? eh?

Maybe Genesee should put a little time in developing a non-fart ingredient and their award winning Cream Ale would start to climb the charts again.

I probably had my first sip of beer out of a bottle just like this standing next to my Dad while we grilled some meat in the summer. "You wanna try a sip?" "Sure" I said. I took a sip and skrinkled up my face at the sour taste.

When I was of legal drinking age in 1978 this is what The Green Death looked like. We popped a few tops and emptied our fair share of the hometown brew.

Babbo, New York City

2009-03-26T20:46:00.002-04:00

I was in NYC by myself for the Engage Expo and I thought "what should I do for dinner?" Babbo popped to mind. I'd been wanting to go to Babbo for a while. It was chef Mario Batali's first restaurant. With it he won Best New Restaurant of 1998 and launched his restaurant empire.

Who's Mario Batali you ask? Doesn't everyone knows the rotund, pony tailed, shorts wearing, clog footed chef?

I took a cab to the beautiful 19th century town within a city that is the West Village. I walked the narrow and curving streets between the brick colonials and brownstones until I got to the white facade of Babbo at 110 Waverly Place. With a solid door and curtained windows I couldn't see inside. I was a little intimidated but ....

I walked in, threw a big smile at the maitre' di and asked if I could sit at the bar for dinner. I had no reservations. There were three open seats there. The gastronomic gods smiled upon me, they took my jacket and seated me at the service end of the bar. 10 minutes later the whole restaurant was packed. I lucked out.

I ordered a glass of Rosso di Monticello 2006. It was soooo smooth. I felt good and looked around the room.

It's not a big place. On the main floor it probably seats 65 and another 35 upstairs. It's cozy. The bar is dark wood with clean mill work and vintage pendant lights overhead. The walls are stucco. The bar is on the right when you enter. In the back half of the restaurant are two lines of tables hugging the walls. There is no art. The only adornment on the dining room walls are a line of lights. Their petite shades cast a warm yellow glow across the room. The warm embrace of lighting is accented every three feet with recessed lighting from above and up-light from candles sprinkled across the dining room tables. In the center of the dining area is a four foot round table with a resplendent arrangement of bare winter branches reaching towards the ceiling. Surrounding the display were dozens of wine bottles at the service of the waiters and their parched guests. It looked like a serving table at a house party. A grand staircase with brass railings anchored the center rear of the room and lead to an upstairs dining room.

The staff debates the music selection next to me as I'm surveying the room. The restaurant, very refined and elegant is known for playing rock-n-roll. For my dining pleasure we get Vampire Weekend. Nice.

photo courtesy of foodtravelblog.com

Time to eat. I ordered Antipasti and Primi from the menu, skipping Secondi.

First to come was Grilled Octopus with “Borlotti Marinati” and Spicy Limoncello Vinaigrette. The vinaigrette was amazing. It was syrupy with a honey taste and slightly tart from the lemon. I asked the bartender what the vinaigrette was made from. Soon she had poured me a taste of limoncello which is a lemon liqueur from southern Italy. That was a treat. The octopus itself was perfect. Very moist with moderately charred skin for just the right crunch in your mouth.

Next was Gnocchi with Braised Oxtail. The gnocchi were soft and moist and the oxtail sauce was surprisingly and enjoyable spicy. Perfect to mop up with a good piece of bread.

The bartender and I chatted. She was a Colorado ranch gal who'd been in NYC for 5 years. We talked about Babbo, Boston restaurants and the "secret" U2 show happening in Boston that night. She was a big U2 fan. At one point I noticed a huge 5 liter bottle of Radici Tonrasi 1999 being poured in the dining room. This is a big bottle. I mean the waiter had to hold it with two hands to pour it. It's easily two feet tall. I asked what it was. She wasn't sure but 10 minutes later the bottle was in front of me and she was pouring me a tasting. The staff was very friendly and wanting to please. I always love sitting at the bar, it's always much more casual and the bartenders are usually full of good information. I was having a great time.

Good tunes, exciting food, great staff. Eccellente Mario!

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Sam's BBQ Ausin, TX

2009-03-24T09:32:00.019-04:00

It was dark out and he was coming at me, fast, with his head cocked at a 20 degree angle, crazed eyes and arms waving yelling . "F__ that motherf___r", ..."I nearly had to split that mother f___r's wig!"

Uh oh, was he talking ot me?... I avoided eye contact. I knew we were in a bad area but this brought it home. Luckily I was at the front door and we quickly ducked inside. We were at Sam's BBQ on the east side of Austin Texas.

Sam's is located in a dilapidated old road-house well worn from it's legions of fans. The interior is one big room tricked out in early 70's linoleum and painted Masonite. Plastic table cloths, clipped at the ends, covered a couple booth tables. A picnic table and well worn wooden tables with mix matched chairs filled out the dining room.

The BBQ smell instantly hit my nose when we entered and made my stomach quench. It was a quiet night inside the restaurant. As we looked at the menu basketball was on a TV hanging in one corner and in the opposite corner a fan blew some motion into the room.

As we stood at the counter my friend Susan noticed a smoldering log on the floor through the kitchen door. Mr. Mays called for help to get that rogue log back into the stove. I used this event as my chance to see the works. "Can I see the cooker" I asked as we all looked at the kitchen. "Sure" he said. I was through the door in a flash staring at the red hot wood fire under an 8 foot long brick oven with metal cooking pans embedded in it. It was a basic, rustic, time honored and proven cooking stove ...and it made me just a little bit hungrier that I was before.

The owner offered us tasting slices. "Hell yeah" I said. He cut through the meat and it fell bleeding juice onto the cutting board making me salivate like Pavlov's dogs.

Oh my God. So tender. The beef melted in your mouth. Tonight he had beef, mutton, and sausage available. We all ordered two-meat plates and soon, on tri-sectioned styrofoam plates, we had a ball scoop of potatoes, baked brown beans, sausage and piles of mutton and beef. Over the top was a viscous tangy sweet BBQ sauce. Heaven. I washed it all down with a giant Pepsi.

Looking around the room there were photos covering the yellowing walls like wallpaper. Photos of all sizes and shapes. Some autographed 8x10 glossies from visiting luminaries like Ray Benson, Bruce Springsteen, Los Lonely Boys and President Clinton. There were concert flyer's and art posters of Martin Luther King, Obama and rap acts. Most populous were snapshots of locals having their fifteen minutes of fame.

Throughout our entire meal Momma Mays talked to us. The May's family owns and operates Sam's. She had the most expressive eyes and face as she told us stories and tales. She told us Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet had shot a movie here called The Life of David Gale. She made a face about Spacey, effeminately flicked her wrist and her whole body shook as she laughed. She said Winslet ate the BBQ with knife and fork. "I kept telling her, use your fingers girl!" She told me she had a son name Willie ...but he's not a baseball player, again laughing with lifted eyebrows, bulged eyes and pursed mouth inviting me to laugh with her.

I ate every last morsel on my plate. I was very happy and promised to come back to try the chicken and ribs as we exited into the night.

The crack heads were still out there. I could see the same guy heading up the street towards us again. We took a left out the front door, walked around the side porch and jumped into our car. I decided to go out the back way to do an end around the zombie. As I came up the side street I could see this dude had been watching us and had turned and was headed towards the car. Crap. Worse, there was a second guy who was now crossing the street. Crackhead 1 was making towards the driver's door and zombie number 2 was making towards the passenger door.

The squeeze play was on. I looked up & down the main drag. There was no traffic coming. If I had to I could "punch it" and fly right between these two poor souls. As we came along side Mr. Crackhead he bent to look in the car at and squeezed his index finger and thumb together. I wasn't sure if he was asking for money or insulting my manhood because I kept my foot on the accelerator and zoomed off toward the newly towering Austin skyline.

I'll definitely be back at Sam's another time....probably during the daytime though. :)

All photo's are from Perceptor's Photo Report at http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/

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WinoVino - Austin, TX

2009-03-16T17:16:00.017-04:00

I'm at SXSW Interactive in Austin this week and I've been to some great sessions and heard some good speakers. But, this isn't a business blog, it's a travel blog. So what else have I stumbled on?

VinoWino that's what. We rolled into Club de Ville in Austin Saturday night to find a hot dark room tightly packed with bouncing silhouettes.

To the left as we entered was a seven piece gypsy band called WinoVino that was building the crowd to a frenzy. The accordion and fiddle players bleeding sweat as the tempo accelerated and the singer leading the crowd in percussive shouts of "Hey!" as we all broke into spontaneous Russian folk dancing. Whew... and I hadn't even gotten a beer yet.

WinoVino define themselves as a Vaudeville Gypsy Punk Cabaret band finding their inspiration"from the cobbled streets of Paris (circa 1920) to a dusty wagon train in Romania, from gluttony on the high seas of piracy to the hunger of Americana folklore, we've hitched our way across a century and more to find you here today".

I define them as pure fun.

Too soon the set ended. I wish we had stumbled upon them earlier in the night.

We headed outdoors to cool down. Like most clubs in Austin, Club de Ville has a big outdoor space but theirs is uniquely bounded by a 30' limestone cliff. It creates a nice outdoor room. They used the limestone wall as a projection screen where perfectly good images were turned into impressionist paintings by the jagged cliff. We huddled near one of the ubiquitous outdoor heaters, finished our drinks and enjoyed the night air.

If you like Gypsy or Gypsy Punk here's a couple other bands I follow. Gorgol Bordello and Rupa and the April Fishes.

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In a New York minute

2009-03-12T20:11:00.004-04:00

I'm in the back of a cab from JFK to Manhattan on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. I'm looking down reading my blackberry and I'm suddenly lurched forward. I hear the high shriek of rubber on road. I look up to see a pick up truck in front of me with it's right front wheel turned at a right angle. White smoke is billowing from the tire as it slides along perpendicular to the truck. Wow, the axle must have snapped and the tire is caught in the wheel well. I hope it doesn't pop out and into our windshield. We are all sliding on the road like synchronized skaters in slow motion.

As we all skid to a stop I immediately look to the rear and see oncoming cars and trucks approaching at 55 mph. They quickly try to switch lanes to avoid us. All of the sudden a small Toyota pops out of the center lane accelerating towards us to pass. My heart jumps to my throat. I can see the crash in my mind. I try to pull myself into the back right corner of the car ....the Toyota grows bigger as it approaches, accelerates even more and swerves back into the center lane. Holy shit! Every hair on my body is at attention.

Two more cars and a semi approach. All swerving before they make a bad situation worse. Then, thankfully, there's a break in the crushing traffic and we quickly accelerate out from behind the disabled truck and continue our way to Manhattan. Thank you cabbie!

A Long Pond Runs Through It

2009-03-02T09:52:00.005-05:00

The coupling started at the Island Cottage end of Long Pond where the practice squad rained water on the couple and nourished the creation of the Exit 45 baby. Along the creek and Maiden Lane the baby was christened and it was here the trumpet player wailed in the attic. Adding two boys to the growing brood prompted a move to Wheeldon Drive away from Long Pond. Successful and happy they moved again to Hilltop, adding pooh and the cheerleaders until they all grew and flew away leaving the couple alone on the Hilltop. Empty nested the golden draw of Long Pond pulled at the couple again. They moved back with the deer and turkeys, to a smaller footprint and no stairs. Happy but hobbled they navigated along Long Pond to visit family, friends, shops, shows, doctors and restaurants. As time took it's toll the southern end of Long Pond pulled the couple into the vortex of hospital and hospice where Dad left us for a new journey. But Long Pond held him in it's grasp for a final gathering of family and friends who flowed to him like a stream showing us the full measure a couple and a life can contribute to others.

For Mom & Dad

Pee 'vd in Paris

2009-01-31T12:22:00.025-05:00

It was my first time in Paris. It was my first time in Europe. I was with this cute little Irish girl with cheeks like parenthesis around her radiant white smile. Dressed in black we tried to blend in, fancied ourselves sophisticated Euro types. Molly knew enough French to read menus. Together we knew enough not to starve. "deux café noir s'il vous plaît" and "une baguette de pain et de fromage" (Black coffee, French bread and cheese) At night it was a baguette, cheese and red wine.

In reality we were strangers in a strange land. A beautiful, fun and exotic new land. A landscape planned to be beautiful, intricately detailed and uniform in design. A land of good cuisine and an attitude of casual elegance and good living.

We'd spent the afternoon combing the streets of 1st arrondismont. We lingered at the Stravinsky Fountain...

... and in the large plaza in front of the famed inside out building that is the Pompidou Center.

We ate and drank little bits of Paris as we wandered. As we entered the Les Halles district I really had to go to the bathroom.

I spied a beautifully designed restaurant nearby and ducked in to find a bathroom. I followed the signs to les toilettes des hommes. I descended the stairs to the bathroom and there was a women standing there. That unverved me...and she wanted money. Hmmm. Never seen that before. Quickly I deduced this was nothing kinky. She had an apron on and had an assortment of cleaning products and personal hygiene items for sale. She was the bathroom attendant. I gave her 1000 francs ...whatever that was worth and quickly entered the bathroom.

I looked around the gleaming modern stainless steel room I just entered. I couldn't see any stalls or urinals. The walls were brilliant brushed metal panels. I walked around pushing on a couple panels thinking they would open a stall. Nothing happened. I felt the attendant watching me. On one whole wall was a pleasant waterfall gently moving like a liquid sheet of glass. It was nicely lit from the underside and it made me have to pee even more than before.

I started to wiggle and cross my legs like a 3rd grader. I danced in place like a jerky David Byrne turning around the room trying to unlock the puzzle of where I could relieve my surging bladder. Is the waterfall a urinal? It empties into a drain at the bottom like a urinal. I couldn't ask because I couldn't speak French and no-one else came in so I couldn't watch and copy! I couldn't bring myself to pee on the wall. The attendant was right there! What if it wasn't a urinal she saw me piss on the wall?

Driven to madness by the taunting waterfall I did what anyone would do. I ran... out of the bathroom, back up the steps and outside! :)

I came across this restaurant in a design magazine about a year later. It was designed by celebrity designer Philip Stark and it turns out the waterfall was the urinal!

Cathedral Ledge in winter, North Conway, New Hampshire

2009-01-29T10:24:00.008-05:00

Molly took us on a winter hike to the top of Cathedral Ledge in North Conway New Hampshire. It was a warm winter day and steam was rising off the snow lending a theatrical look to the woods. I expected to see wolves staring at us from the shadowy woods like in the Polar Express. Frozen creeks were springing back top life sending throaty gurgles echoing of the forest.

We walked down a wide path that's a gravel road in the summer. With two feet of snow on the ground the path was thankfully tamped down by snowmobile riders to give us some hard pack for walking. On our left, before the road started to climb, ice climbers picked their way up the crystalline walls of Cathedral Ledge. Solid walls of ice build up as the freezing, melting and refreezing winter snows layer on each other. Melt water trickled today, clearly seen under the ice walls. Kinda spooky.

As the road climbed so did my pulse. I unzipped my jacket as sweat sucked my flannel shirt to my skin. After a while I could hear my heart pumping in my ears. I took my scarf off, my gloves off. I completely unzipped. I like to have my head up when I walk, ears open, eyes watching, taking in the scene, camera at the ready. Now my head was down as we climbed elevation. I watched as one foot moved in front of the other. I was not having fun.

"How much further Mol?" "It's right up around the bend." "You know that for sure?" "I think so." Molly's bad at directions and knowing exactly where she is. She hiked this road earlier this year but there's not a lot of landmarks to mark progress. How does one tell one tree from the next? I knew she had no idea how much further we had to go.

The Duncan's were now 100 feet ahead of the Welch's. Molly & Drew calling back to Dylan & I, spurring us on! "Come on!"

We climbed and rounded two more turns in the path. Molly once again said "We're almost there". Dylan & I stopped. We'd had enough. "We'll meet you at the bottom" we yelled. I could tell Molly was pissed. She trudged off stamping and beating the snow to a pulp under churning legs. Drew ran behind her.

Dylan & I took our jackets off and spread them on the path. We layed down on our backs. After a minute my ears opened again. We looked at the sky through the over-hanging pine boughs and listened to the majestic sound of silence. Silence is a BIG sound. We seldom hear silence. In the city and suburbs there's always something making a sound. Here it was vacuousness silence. My pulse slowed, my sweat dried up. I stopped thinking about me and took in the woods. We entered the silence and became one with it.

Feeling better we got up and hiked around the next bend and unbelievably we were at the top.
There, behind Molly & Drew, was a beautiful vista animated with moving walls of fog settling in between valley's and vales.

The neighborhood where our house is was laid out below us like a winter diorama. Cranmore Mountain stood facing us far across the Mt Washington valley.

Look at the sweat on Drew.

A boy and his dog

...then we had to hike down.

The Zan Charlotte, NY

2009-01-25T10:20:00.000-05:00

There were two legendary rope swings in Charlotte....pronounced "Shar-lot", not Charlotte like that city down in North Carolina. Charlotte is a neighborhood in Rochester, NY that hugs the brown mushroomed mouth of the Genesee River where it empties into Lake Ontario.

The first swing was behind 48 school. I heard the swing was 100' off the ground when you swung out. The river gorge fell off quickly there, almost cliff like. We heard kids were breaking arms, legs and puncturing ribs from falling off that swing and violently entering the tree canopy below.
I never went to that swing.

The other swing was called the Zan....as in Tarzan. It was down past 38 school, north of the Stutson Street Bridge also on the river gorge. It hung from a huge tree in the forested gorge. At the top of the slope the ground vegetation had been reduced to dirt. Plumes of dry dirt would explode around our feet when we walked making our white canvas sneakers all gray. We also created great mushroom clouds by jumping off the swing.

There was a dangerous feeling being at the Zan. We never knew what kids or thugs might show up. Charlotte was a rougher neighborhood than the one we lived in. It was an older neighborhood. The housing stock changed when you went from Greece to Charlotte. It immediately switched from suburban ranch and colonial homes built in the 60's to homes built in the last century. It was the Port of Rochester. Charlotte High School was well know for it's racial problems and violence. And there were gangs. Gangs were big in the early 70's. I had a house on my paper route down the street where all the brothers went to Charlottle High and were in gangs. They wore wind breaker jackets with their gang acronyms proudly displayed on the back of them. S.A.T. (Satan's Attack Team) and B.A.D (Bad Ass Demons). We once got trapped in Charlotte High School by a pair of criminal twin brothers who were firing pellet guns at anyone who tried to leave. We had to call the cops to get out. I remember a broken-armed Claude Lebeau transferring into my Catholic school relating his story of being thrown out of the window at Charlotte High during a recent riot. One of the great social events in Charlotte, the St. Anthony's Day Festival eventually had to be canceled because of the growing violence between biker gangs.

We fancied ourselves little hoodlums too. We'd seen West Side Story. We practiced flipping over fences like they did in that movie. We were more like Peter Pan's Lost Boys than real ruffians however. We formed our own little street gang. We had a call signal. "Heey Willieeee". If someone yelled that signal you had to come running to see what innocent kid was riding his bike down our street.

To get to the Zan we'd ride our bikes, making sure cigarettes stolen from our Mom's were tucked safely into a jacket breast pocket. Perched on our "chopped" bikes with banana seats and sissy bars we cut through the Vietnam-like gully to avoid going over the troll bridge or running into Crazy Craig on Denise Road. Piper, the P.R. Dooner & I rolled on over to Vatter's Market where we'd been sneaking off at lunch from Our Lady of Mercy to buy candy for years. We loaded some candy cigarettes along side our real ones. On the south side of Vatters were the railroad tracks. Over those tracks we entered Charlotte.

The Zan was legendary. It was tied 30-40 feet up in the tree. When you swung out you were way up in the air and dangerously over the railroad tracks. The feeling you got was of flying, wind in your face blowing your hair straight back. Standing around the swing I remember the unfamiliar taste of menthol in my mouth and sulfur up my nose as we tried to puff our way to coolness. Dirt particles mingled in the air with the cigarette smoke.

We put pennies on the railroad tracks to flatten them. We put stones on there too nervous they might derail the train. We hopped the lumbering trains too even though we were already aware of the tales of kids falling under the train and getting their legs cut off.

One of the coolest sights down in the gorge were the giant turtles who showed up every spring. They varied in size. Some you could hold in the palm of your 12 year old hand and others were a good 15" in diameter. The effort to be cool went right out the window, we were boys again and in awe of nature. We marveled at the turtle shells. They were Painted Turtles and carried beautiful mosaics on their backs and bellies. We piled stones on their backs to see what they could carry. We flipped them over to see if they could get back upright. They couldn't. We even brought one home for a while where we tried to keep it wet and moist. Eventually we had to let it go.

Eventually we let boyhood go too but at that time we were still boys. Still innocents. Not babies but not teenagers. Still wrapped in the womb of Hilltop Rd not really knowing the realities of danger or violence but enjoying each day as a new adventure like the Lost Boys or Tom & Huck or the boys in Stand By Me.

Winter in Rochester

2009-01-22T20:38:00.000-05:00

Remember the beginning of Rudolph when Burl Ives (the snowman) talks
about the storm that almost canceled Christmas? There were scenes of
cars covered in snow, people pushing cars out of snow piles, newspapers
proclaiming "We're Fr0zen" and "Ice Peril Warning". That's what it felt like
in Rochester last week. Winter's are "special" there. Upstate New York
and Minnesota are the only two places I've been where winter is sooo harsh.

The temperature hovered in the single digits and went below zero when the
sun set. The snow screamed out in a dry high pitched scrunch under each
step you took. Fresh snow stuck to cars like road rash on skateboarders. It
moved away from your feet and fell from car tires in small cakes and slices.
There was no squashing or melting, it was too cold.

Foyer doors at building entries were glazed with a kaleidoscope of ice.
Icicles hung like hungry daggers from the overhangs of buildings and from
the under-carriage and bumpers of cars.

People hunkered against the cold with faces squished and necks pulled
into their bodies. Most didn't even have hats, gloves or the appropriate
winter jackets as they huddled under car hoods emptying their back-up
bottles of wiper fluid into their wells. Car exhaust and breath sent plumes
skyward.

I remember those winters well. I remember strapping on ice skates and
skating on Hilltop Rd., right on the street. It was solid ice! I remember
reaching out of our second floor windows to pull 2' and 3' icicles off the
overhangs. We'd suck on them like popsicle's. When the snow froze
over and got a decent crust we could walk on the surface. We'd be
2 to 3 feet off the ground! And if you broke though you'd sink down to your
knee losing your boot when you tried to pull your leg out. It stayed below
reezing so long we built bobsled runs for our sleds and iced them down
with the hose.

As the world tramped over the purity of the heavens the snow eventually
took on the dirty patina of life. Cars added a layer of dirt and spray looking
like 4x4's that just came out of the desert. Dirty snow built up and caked
on the inside of wheel wells leaving just enough room for the
movement of the wheel.

Behind the wheel little snow turds built up under the car chassis
eventually get kicked off or falling off to leave brown piles littered around the
landscape like buffalo poop on the prairie.

...and no one blinks an eye at this severe environment. No-one misses
work or school. Streets are clean, sidewalks are plowed.

In fact if you live here or anywhere in the north lands of America why not
have fun with it? Enjoy. I did.

Abbey Road, London England

2009-01-11T10:27:00.019-05:00

Night had descended on London. Molly & I were making our way back from a pub walking tour of Hampstead in the far north of London. We'd just toured one of the great Victorian villages on the planet and had a few pints in some of it's finer establishments. Instead of taking the Tube back to central London we grabbed a cab so we could watch London pass us by like a movie through the windows.

Our gregarious cabbie hears us speaking and asks us with his Irish brogue where we're from. We have a great conversation about America, Boston and the Irish. After a while he says "I've got som-ting you'll love. You want to see it? Free of charge. I just know you're gonna luv it." A brief kidnapping scenario goes through my head but I say OK given we've been having a great conversation already.

A few lefts and rights later pull up to Abbey Road. Yes that Abby Road. There in front of us is that world famous cross walk where the barefoot Paul and his three cohorts were caught mid-stride for the Abbey Road album cover.

He pulls in through the wrought iron gates. "Can you do that I ask? Won't the guards come out"? "Not if we keep moving" he says. They don't want to upset anyone too quickly. They dunno who's in this cab. Could be John or Sir Paul ya know".

No-one appears in the one lit window as we slowly roll though the front drive & car park peering at the legendary recording studio. I was thrilled. This was hallowed ground tred on by perhaps the greatest music masters of the 20th Century. I've looked at that Abbey Road album cover for all my life and to actually be in that scene felt like we'd stepped though the looking glass into a fantasy. There are legendary locations all over London. You can't hardly believe you're immersed in a landscape you've read about since childhood but this surprise was a great moment and a nice gift from our Irish cabbie.

True to his word he did not charge us for the detour....but I tipped him BIG.

London's Black Cab drivers are all eager tour guides, ready and willing to talk and proffer the history of their famed city. I've had guys take me on little tours all over London just by starting to ask questions. If you find yourself in London. Do it.

For all UK posts click here

Bay View Coffee - San Francisco, Ca,

2009-01-11T10:26:00.013-05:00

Pics from
whatimseeing.com/2007/12/07/hocus-pocus/

The ferry stern recedes from view, disappearing into the fog,
spewing it's wake towards me.

Birds huddle against the cold just outside the window their
heads pulled back inside their feathers.

I'm at Peets Coffee in the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

I took my morning walk and spotted the Ferry Building.
I bee-lined towards it thinking coffee and a bay view would
be nice this morning. As I strode through the front plaza
under the clock tower it's carillon bells exalt my entry.

The sun climbs above the billowing fog to rake sunlight and
shadows across the boardwalk in front of me. The ferry
terminal's stainless steel docks gleam and glimmer in the
sunlight off-setting the pink fringed fog hugging the
bay behind it.

Business people and hipsters with their ubiquitious earbuds
parade pass as another ferry unloads it's charges.

Behind me on polished concrete floors are four foot square
common tables filled with newspaper readers, laptop surfers
and coffee klatchers. They get up intermittently in one's and
two's to make their way to their day's obligations.

Thick blooded natives take seats outside with spring
jackets on.

A flock of birds ducking the fog skips across the water
inches above it.

The ever changing scene morphs to gray again as another ferry
blows it's horn and backs out for the return trip to Marin.
Fog rolls up over the boat, chills the birds, covers the
boardwalk and blankets the ferry building. Mother Nature
closed the curtain on the sun, show's over. I pull my scarf
close, cap my coffee and begin the walk back up Market Street
to begin my work day.

Winter Wonderland. Marblehead, Massachusetts

2008-12-29T09:29:00.007-05:00

I've had the privilege of being able to see a lot of the world and Marblehead, Massachusetts stands as one of the most beautiful places I've been. I live here everyday and the beauty of the place never diminishes. I walk it's streets as often as possible. I walk for exercise but I always bring a camera and coffee shop change. Even the grays and whites of winter can't put a dull veneer on our old town. It just redecorates it for the new season and adds it's own distinguishing features.

As the first snow of the season fell I had to be out in it. Being a born & bred Western New Yorker I love a good snow storm, I love the white out immersion and the snow blowing in my face. I feel alive, I feel 10 years old again, bundled up in leggings, my winter coat and a stocking hat. My mittens and scarf covered with dingle berries of frozen snow. Inside my buckle-up boots my feet are warm and dry protected by the Wonderbread bags wrapped so snugly around my feet as I seek the protection of the igloo bushes pretending to be an Eskimo in the Arctic. ...I digress.

Reveling in my arctic past I make my way into old town. Snow makes it's angled way onto our faces. I stick my tongue out to catch a few flakes.

Marblehead was founded in 1629 and it's "Old Town" may be the greatest living collection of 17th and 18th century buildings in America. The streets are crooked and narrow and have a distinctly European feel. The town is not a museum. It's a living breathing community full of activity and pride of place and onto this antique visage falls a sparkling highlight of crystalline white adding a measure of magic to the accepting Christmas decorations.

My favorite coffee and breakfast shops offer cover from the storm, their windows fogging from the collective sighs of warm customers and their cups-of-joe.

Window displays reflect the holiday spirit.

Lobster shanties sit quiet.

But Gatchells' Playground and Redd's Pond come alive with sledders, skaters and hockey games.

Once again Marblehead enlivens my soul and inspires me.

Snow angel time!