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Travelogue: Aloha!

30 Mar

Aloha from Oahu!

You’ve probably gathered that I work for a pretty spectacular company and am one of the few people who can say that I love my job and mean it. I realize you probably want to stab me, so I’ll just add fuel to the fire: one of the perks of working for my organization is use of a beach house in Hawaii.

Not too shabby right?

Which is how Alan and I found ourselves at DCA at seven o’clock Friday morning, checking in for a flight to Oahu by way of Seattle. And how – a mere 19 hours later – we were standing at the luggage carousel in Honolulu, watching as a lone bag made its victory lap, my own bag no where to be seen.

I was trying to reassure myself  when a representative from Alaska Air approached. “Are you Alison?” I nodded. “Your bag is on the next flight arriving from Seattle, which gets in in two hours.”

I wanted to cry. It was 8:30pm Hawaii time, which meant that in my world, it was 2:30am. I hadn’t slept on the flight and was deliriously tired. Alan wisely persuaded me against having the airline deliver the bag to us in the morning. “You’ll sleep better with your own clothes and toothpaste,” he argued.

Finally, I acquiesced, so we headed to Waikiki to burn an hour while waiting for my bag to arrive. Waikiki was low on my list of places to see, so I was completely fine knocking it out while I was tired and just needed to kill a bit of time. Check. I’m fine if we never go back.

Two hours later, we retrieved my bag (yay!) and were bound for the North Shore, where we’d made reservations in Haleiwa via AirBNB. Although I was so tired I wanted to stab someone at the time, it probably was the best thing for reseting our clocks and shaking jet lag. We crashed at midnight and got a solid eight hours in – and have been running on Hawaiian time ever since.

Lesson: Thank You, Alaska Airlines for losing (then quickly finding!) my luggage.

Well, it probably didn’t hurt that our lodging was right on the Ali’i Beach. It’s hard to wake up angry when you’re looking out over the Pacific.

Next up: What to do on a rainy day on Oahu?

 

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There was no Kool Aid to drink.

18 Mar

I’ve been doing a lot of yoga lately. It’s one of my new year’s resolutions. Last year, in my quest to swim 50 miles, I got a bit lazy about yoga since I didn’t have a regular studio. And while people claim that swimming is a great whole body exercise, I found that I lost strength and muscle tone that I’d built in yoga. So this year, when it came time to choose between a gym membership (for pool access) or a yoga studio (for, well, yoga), I decided to spend the money on yoga.

I know, some of you are scratching your heads asking why the two are mutually exclusive. Two reasons: time and money. Satisfied?

To help kick off my recommitment to yoga, my friend Betsy and I went on a yoga retreat at Yogaville in February. Yogaville is an ashram on 800 acres of wooded land outside Charlottesville, Virginia. If you google it, you might become a bit worried that it’s possibly a cult. I’ll admit – that was one of my concerns as we headed into a weekend.

It didn’t help that when we arrived, the people greeting us were all wearing white flowy clothes and had names like Chandrani and Vishnu, despite the fact that they looked like they were probably originally baptized as Mary and John. While we had an option to sleep in the “dorm,” we opted for a private room and private bath. The only wall decorations in our room were a photo of the late Swami G, founder of both the ashram and the integral yoga movement in the United States, and the ashram’s symbol, which looked like this:

Yogaville Symbol

Yogaville Symbol

At first, these decorations did little to convince me we weren’t about to become indoctrinated into a cult. But as the weekend went on, I began to realize that if Swami G had been a politician, his platform would have focused on creating peace among all world religions.

Cult concerns aside, the weekend-long immersion was a great way to kick-off my yoga commitment. We rose at 5:30 for a 45 minute meditation led by a monk, then attended a 90 minute Hatha yoga practice followed by breakfast in the communal dining room. A hike to the LOTUS shrine, then lunch. Then a yoga nidra practice before dinner, followed by satsang, which is their Saturday night celebration.

A word about satsang:

Imagine a small auditorium with three musicians on stage, all in flowy white robes. For the next 45 minutes, they will play variations on the same song while singing chants in a call-and-response format. The chants are based on the Hare Krishna mantra, so you revisit your cult fears and wonder if you are surrounded by Hare Krishnas.

Then you wonder what that means and realize your knowledge on this entire subject is a bit vague. Are Hare Krishnas are the bald people who hand out poppies at airports and drive little cars? Or are those Shriners? Are Shriners associated with a circus, or have you made that up? Have you made up the bit about little cars? Are the poppies handed out by people honoring dead soldiers?

As your head begins to explode from all you do not know, you realize that behind you, some of the younger members of the audience (guys in their 20s) who presumably live at Yogaville year-round, have become so moved by the chanting and music that they can’t contain themselves. They are dancing, running and kicking up their heels in a way that seems a bit over the top. You want to be happy for their joy, but instead you think, “These guys just need a beer.”

To help pass the time, you sing along, realizing that you can subtly change the words for your own amusement, which will explain your Sunday night tweet: “Spent the weekend at an ashram. My main take-away is that when chanting Hari Om you can say, ‘Hidey Hole’ instead without people noticing.”

A word about meals:

The cafeteria featured only vegetarian and vegan meals. The volunteers in the kitchen did a good job pulling together meals that provided a good variety – as an example: borscht, sautéed kale, lentils, vegetable curry, fresh fruit and a salad bar. However, we quickly learned that if you don’t arrive right at the start of the meal, odds were good that the best items would be heavily picked over.

When I say “best items” I’m actually talking about potatoes. Rosemary potatoes for breakfast and cinnamon sweet potatoes for lunch? All cleaned out by the time we arrived. And that’s when I knew beyond a doubt that I couldn’t live communally. I’m fine honoring the quiet hours from 10pm to 8am. I’ll even chant with you on Saturday nights. And I won’t whine about giving up meat or wine. But taunt me with something I’m actually excited to eat – and demolish it before I get a portion? We are done.

funny Hare Krishna

Sunday we wrapped up with another Hatha practice before hitting the road and returning to DC. It was a nice escape from the city, but I won’t be packing my bags and changing my name to Ganesh any time soon. 

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Eat to live or live to eat?

18 Oct

Image Source: © 2014 pithypants

We all learned a lot about each other’s eating preferences on our trip to Italy. If I had to summarize, here are our dietary tenets…

Mom:

  1. It’s not breakfast unless it involves orange juice and milk.
  2. Every table should include a salt shaker.
  3. There is such a thing as “too much” marinara sauce.
  4. Meat makes it a meal.

Me:

  1. Live to eat.
  2. Salami is like a blood-sugar insurance policy – one slice at every meal keeps things ticking.
  3. There’s no such thing as too much pasta.
  4. If a restaurant has bruschetta, we’re ordering it.

Alicia:

  1. Eat to live.
  2. Black tea, hold the sugar – hot/cold throughout the day.
  3. Have yogurt, will travel.
  4. Coronettos whenever possible.

Further demonstrating how differently we approach food, shortly after returning, my sister shared this link for Soylent. I encourage you to check out the page and see if anything about the concept appeals to you. (Soylent is a food replacement product that provides nutrients via a powder that mixes into a drink.)

The stated benefits are:

  • Time: Prepare multiple meals in minutes – no need to shop for individual ingredients or plan ahead
  • Money: Spend less than $10 per day on food, and less than $4 per meal – get more than a day’s worth of meals for less than the cost of takeout
  • Nutrition: Eat balanced and wholesome – get all of the essential nutrients required to fuel the human body

Sorry. This guy’s value proposition falls apart for me with the first bullet – I enjoy taking time to shop for ingredients and cook dinner. And more important than money or nutrition to me is TASTE. It might be wrong, but I eat for enjoyment, not nutrition. My sister on the other hand…

Granted, all you need to do is look at us to see how our eating philosophies have shaped our bodies. She’s an easy size 4, and I could definitely stand to lose a pound or, um, fifteen. Details.

Finally – because I’m mildly obsessed with Soylent and the fact that this guy thinks enough people are wired like my sister that there’s a market for this product – can we discuss the name? Is it a terrible or brilliant marketing move to name his product after the 1973 sci-fi movie Soylent Green, which is summarized by Wikipedia as “…the investigation into the murder of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and all-year humidity due to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including “soylent green.”

I mean, the plot does seem to be playing out in real life, so I can see where Soylent’s founder drew a connection. The problem, however, is that at the end of the film, you discover that “soylent green” is actually PEOPLE. So here’s guy in 2014, selling an unrecognizable nutritional powder and he’s deliberately named it something that calls to mind cannibalism. Interesting brand strategy.

Which camp are you in? Love to eat or eat for fuel?

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From Russia, with (Not Exactly) Love?

9 Oct
Mom and Alicia on our train TO Naples - when everyone was healthy (but apparently tired).

Mom and Alicia on our train TO Naples – when everyone was healthy (but apparently tired).

 

I thought the Cold War was over, and – Putin aside – Americans and Russians generally got along now. I may have been wrong. That, or we encountered a group of Russians who were having an incredibly bad day as we left the Amalfi Coast.

Monday we took the train from Salerno to Rome. It was the same train we’d taken to Naples earlier in the week, so – having learned from our first ride – we wisely chose seats on the western-side of the car so we’d be shaded for the ride.

We were a bit nervous about the journey because my mom had woken up sick as a dog the previous day. She’d been in such bad shape (a self-rated “1” on a scale of 1-10) that we’d explored the airline’s policy for changing tickets so she wouldn’t have to travel until she was better. But, trooper that she is, she rallied for journey from the coast back up to Rome.

So we found ourselves sitting on the shady side of the car, my mom slumped in a seat with a wad of toilet paper in her pocket to combat her perpetually runny nose, crossing our fingers that we’d be able to make it to Rome with as little hassle a possible.

Things were looking good – until (about an hour into our journey) we pulled into the Naples.

At Naples, it felt like the entire population of Italy was boarding the train. We looked at each other, relieved that we had claimed our seats before the masses joined. And then, without warning, there was suddenly a group of five very large people hovering over us, frowning and pointing at our seats.

My sister, our translator for the trip, said, “Scusi…” then asked a few questions in Italian about the seats that elicited blank-stares. She tried English. They shook their heads, still frowning. Then – hearing them talk to each other – a lightbulb went off and she harkened back to her college years and tried Russian. Boom!

Turns out, the five angry people hulking over us were Russian and had reserved the exact seats we were sitting in. While there were plenty of other empty seats in the car, they were hellbent on having the precise seats that were on their tickets. The thing was – they wouldn’t show Alicia where on their tickets the seats were indicated. She wasn’t asking to challenge them, but rather the figure out how the seating arrangements worked since we couldn’t find any seat numbers on our tickets.

They just kept glaring at us and jostling us and speaking loudly to each other. My mom looked confused. I sat there uselessly holding a half-eaten apple.

[Back-story: Just before the train stopped, my sister asked if I wanted to split an apple. She handed it to me to start – then began composing a text message, which took about ten minutes. I’d eaten my half of the apple well before we’d pulled into the station, but had continued to hold the core, waiting for her to wrap up the text so she could have her half. In the middle of this, the confusion ensued, so I was slowly realizing we were going to need to move, I was going to need to somehow move a backpack and two suitcases down the car and my hand was incapacitated because it was lamely holding a half-eaten apple.]

Finally, I knew what needed to be done. I handed my mom the apple and said, “C’mon – we need to move. They reserved these seats.” I gestured to some other seats down the car. “We’ll just go sit there and get out of the way while we figure out where we’re supposed to sit.”

Much like a puzzle, where you need to move one piece to a temporary spot to make room to move the right piece into place, we needed to maneuver into a temporary space to get out of the Russians’ way so they could claim their seats. But they were standing in the temporary space and got angry when we tried to move into it, despite the polite hand gestures and earnest looks I was giving to show our intention was only temporary.

We finally managed to extract ourselves and move down the car, my sister and I relaying our bags to a new location while my mom carried the apple. We eventually got a nice Italian guy to look at our tickets a show us where the seat numbers were hiding – and got situated in our new block of seats on the opposite end of the car. (To do so, we also had to displace another group of people, but we were nice about it and took the time to point out on our tickets – and theirs – where the seat numbers were located. I’d like to believe our interaction was educational as opposed to confrontational.)

Once we were parked in our forever-seats, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. My mom offered up the apple, which was now browning and had been through too much – by which I mean “held by a sick person” – for anyone to want to eat. We wrapped it in a bag. Alicia pulled out her knitting and resumed working on a scarf.

“Well,” I commented. “That was certainly a cluster.”

Mom nodded.

Alicia got a big smile, “At least I got to speak some Russian!”

I’m not sure we did anything to strengthen US-Russian relations with that little interaction, but at least we didn’t start an international incident.

When I shared this with Alan after returning home, he got caught up in the frustration of the story. Before I could finish, he was offering up Russian phrases he’d learned while living in Georgia. I don’t speak Russian, but even I could tell he wasn’t using the word “mother” to talk about my mom’s health.

Probably best that he wasn’t on that leg of the journey.

 

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The Amalfi Coast: The way it was meant to be seen…

5 Oct
© 2014 - pithypants.com

Positano, photographed by my sister.

To appreciate the Amalfi Coast, you really have to see it from the sea – or at least, that’s what people (by which I mean “friends and guidebooks”) told us. We decided to heed their advice on Friday and join a small private charter to Capri.

Visiting Capri (which is pronounced similarly to “khaki” in terms of where the accent goes) was always part of our agenda, but we’d planned to get there via ferry. Thursday night, however, I went online to explore other options – in no small part because I was so traumatized by our initial bus ride that I was eager to avoid another ride to the port where the ferry departs.

As usually happens, I ended up on TripAdvisor, looking to see what the top Capri attractions were – when I saw a slew of glowing reviews for this boat service. I checked the forecast for the next day (80 degrees and sunny), then reached out to see if there was room for us to join. There was!

© 2014 - pithypants.comThe next morning, we walked five minutes over to the town pier just in time to see a boat speeding up. We hopped on, the last pick-up of a group of ten people spending the day together. The others were also Americans and over the age of 55, so by comparison Alicia and I were spring chickens.

Apparently the first mate (Alessandro) was relieved to have some “younger” women on board, because he kept winding his way over to talk to us. “It is my lucky day,” he said, “To have such beautiful women on the boat.” We rolled our eyes and said, “You actually just mean it’s nice not having retired women on the boat for a change, right?”

Regardless, he said he would open special wine for us on the trip – then later popped the cork out of a bottle of Prosecco. Sorry, Alessandro, you’re going to have to try harder – that’s no Veuve Cliquot. 

He also asked if we had toured the Amalfi Coast roads at night – to which we told him we had, by bus, and we had found it terrifying. He shook his head, “No – by scooter! I take you by scooter – very romantic!” Sorry, Alessandro, now you’re trying TOO hard. Go steer the boat.

Isn't the water unreal?

Isn’t the water unreal?

Once Alessandro was in check, we spent the next two hours zipping along the coast – first over to the Green Grotto (where I learned other peoples’ tricks for distinguishing stalactites from stalagmites), then past the Lovers’ Arch, which newlyweds pass under in a rowboat for good luck after getting married. Then up past Amalfi and Positano before cutting over to the Isle of Capri.

Along the way, a friendly woman who had no filter became our friend. We were all sprawled out on a cushioned sundeck when she introduced herself my reaching over, pointing at my mom’s shin and saying, “I also have those white spots on my leg.” Without waiting for a response, “In Florida they told me they’d go away if I rubbed kerosene on them…” Did they also suggest you should strike a match? 

Among her other quotes from the day:

My son’s wife has fake breasts. They just look like two little melons cut in half and stuck on her chest. Whatever – he seems to like them.

Once you have kids your breasts look like bananas. It’s like someone let all the air out. 

My daughter was a real hellion growing up. Lied about everything. Now she’s an angel. She said she never wanted kids but she’s the best mom. 

© 2014 pithypants.com

Us, swimming, in the middle of no where.

Once we hit Capri, we did a slow loop of the island, threading the needle of the Faraglioni Rocks with our boat before finding a calm place to drop anchor and swim. It was about 80˚ and sunny and the water was still balmy enough that it felt refreshing but not breath-taking. In high season the island is apparently mobbed by boats, but we only ever had a couple boats within our line of sight, which was great.

When we climbed out of the water, the ever-faithful Alessandro was waiting on deck with a hose to spray the salt water off us. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think he enjoyed that part of his job just a bit too much. That, or the salt just really tends to stick to your boobs.

After toweling off, we continued around the island, stopping briefly at the Blue Grotto. The waves were too choppy to enter (we would’ve had to go by rowboat and the entrance doesn’t have much clearance, which makes it weather-dependent) so we continued around to the Marina Grande, where we hopped off to explore the island.

Image Source: http://www.cover-guru.com/covers/preview/Zab2h.jpg

The Isle of Capri itself was underwhelming. I mean, it was very pretty and the views were spectacular, but the mainland of the Amalfi Coast spoils you to such an extent that by the time you hit Capri, it would take a unicorn farting a rainbow to take your breath away.

We puttered around, taking the funicular to the center of Capri, then checked out various shops and gardens, finally walking back down to the marina by way of a winding alley dotted with small shrines to the Madonna.

On our return to the the mainland, the wine was flowing and our fellow tourmates repeatedly sang “Volare” (think Gypsy Kings) at the top of their lungs. It was a big party until we pulled up to the pier in Amalfi, when we started waving goodbye to our new friends. About this time, the captain said, “You leave now too…” to which my sister replied, “Joke? You joke?” while nodding her head.

Turns out, we’d arranged for a special pick-up in Minori, but had failed to specify that we needed a special return. Oops. While I was momentarily miffed (mainly because I thought was going to NOT ride a SITA bus for a day), it ended up working out great because it gave us a chance to explore Amalfi while only taking the bus one way.

In any case, we lived to see another day. And all that advice about seeing Amalfi from the water? Glad we took it.

© 2014 - pithypants.com

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