Our Mini Amazing Race

Two photos from our Mini Amazing Race, called the Citychase. These races are held all over the world, sponsored by Tmobile and Blackberry. My friend C and I had an absolute blast! There were about 600 participants, and I was impressed with how the clue sheets were handed out. Instead of making us all line up for a copy, they announced a list of scavenger hunt items we had to bring back in order to receive our clue sheet. Fortunately for us, the start was directly across the street from my sister's condo, so we just zoomed up there and picked up everything we needed! Still, even with that auspicious beginning, we found ourselves falling quickly behind many other teams. Each clue had a time-consuming challenge attached to be completed before moving on to the next. On our very first challenge, C had to accost a total stranger and ask him to kiss her, to exchange shirts with her, and to do a cheer she would teach him, all while I photographed it with a Blackberry loaned to the challengers. Done, and with a VERY willing stranger I might add, upon re-reading the instructions I saw I was supposed to video them, not still photograph them. The stranger was quite game (C is gorgeous!) and did it all a second time while I tried to figure out the stupid Blackberry! It was hilarious. The next challenge was to kayak down the Confluence, over rocks! C had never been in a kayak but we totally rocked it and headed to the next, pictured above on the right. Yes, we had to ride a mechanical bull! C rolled a pair of dice and we had to stay on for as many seconds as she rolled. Lucky for us she rolled a 6; unlucky for me I went first; lucky for C I stayed on for FIVE WHOLE SECONDS!!! I begged the guy to set the speed for Senior Division but he said he couldn't. Fortunately the bull was surrounded by a giant air mattress, so when I fell off I didn't break a hip! Ha ha!!

We didn't finish all ten challenges, but we had a great time and would do it again in a New York minute!!!

Pueblo Lake State Park

We just spent two nights camping at Pueblo Lake. As you can see by the photos, it is plains camping; a very far cry from mountain camping! The terrain is almost pure clay, which, when wet, sticks to everything and sucks your feet down into it, making mounting the shell a real challenge. You can see our "private" beach, but a view of the whole lake really doesn't translate well into these tiny photos -- it is HUGE, and the week before Memorial Day almost completely devoid of other boaters! That made this novice sculler very happy, as I always worry about crashing into someone, or being crashed into by someone who can't see my narrow, silver boat.

This was only the second time we'd gone tent camping in probably 15 years. We (actually, I) used to make it all so complicated; trying to be green, I'd bring real plates and cups, and would have to wash dishes after every meal. Burgers, steaks, side dishes -- those, along with the real plates, went by the wayside. Our menu the first night was boneless chicken breasts grilled at home, and a bag of frozen veggies and rice. We put it all in a pot of boiling water to heat it up, (the chicken in a ziplock) and it was delish! (Next time we'll bring a steamer basket and won't have to use so much fuel boiling the water). Of course s'mores for dessert, but instead of the Hershey bar that never melts, we used Nutella -- yum!

Breakfast was equally easy -- bacon cooked at home (who can deal with all that bacon fat when you're camping??!), scrambled eggs, cheese all in a whole wheat wrap. Lunch was sandwiches made with those same wraps (so much easier than packing bread, which always seems to get squished). Fruit for snacks. We went to the marina one afternoon for ice cream.

The tent campsites were deserted except for one other tent. The RV sites had a few more people in them, but were far away from us. The silence at night was profound, and the birds in the morning were too numerous to count! When I woke up at 5 and stuck my head out of the tent, I couldn't believe how beautiful that water was, and was thrilled to get on my shell after so many weeks without rowing. A bit out of shape from winter, I only lasted about 45 minutes. Later in the day, when there was too much wind for rowing, I took the kayak out -- that thing is so stable and so much fun to paddle around in! Where the shell is a shark, the kayak is a flounder, but it gets me where I want to go. No matter what vehicle I choose, on the water is the best place in the world.

Religion

I don't pretend to know anything whatsoever about the religions in India. As a matter of fact, I really wish I'd read up on them in order to understand the people better. But a couple of things stood out. Please know that I am only writing about what I experienced -- I am not generalizing about the religions or the religious people themselves.


The Sikhs were the least likely to swarm us or to cheat us (as far as we could tell). They were serene and elegant. Amritsar is their spiritual center, where the Golden Palace is located. In order to enter the grounds, you must remove your shoes, wash your hands and feet, and cover your hair (both men and women). Once inside the temple (after a long wait in line) there were seven or eight maharajis chanting prayers inside a small, beautiful and very hot room. Visitors would simply sit themselves down anywhere (including in line) and start chanting with the maharajis, which was a little disconcerting. One woman was scolded by a guard when her headscarf slipped off.

The Taj Mahal is a Muslim mausoleum, but of course is visited by people of all walks of life. We heard the Muslim call to prayer while we were there, but did not see anyone step out of line to pray. As a matter of fact, there were "line police" specifically there to keep people from mobbing the crypt.

Several times when money was exchanged, whether in a rickshaw, buying bananas at an outdoor market, or paying our hotel bill, we saw the recipient gently waving the money in front of an icon, bowing, and moving his hands in some way, giving thanks for the blessing of having made a sale, I imagine. Many many businesses had incense burning in front of a painting of a god or goddess. Even some rickshaws had a tiny makeshift altar with incense burning!

In McLeod Ganj, where the Dalai Lama resides, was a Buddhist temple where several gods were depicted in statues or paintings. The altars had offerings laid on them, mostly boxes of foods such as Oreos, Ritz crackers, Chips Ahoy. Personally, that detracted a great deal from the solemnity of a religious altar, but being an athiest myself, I simply thought it lacked decorum. Believers would prostrate themselves in front of these altars, so we had to avoid stepping on them as we passed. There was a sign upon entering the temple warning us to watch that our shoes don't get stolen. Hmmmm, how do we do that?

The People

We flew to India on Etihad Airways, the national airline of Abu Dabi. Besides our plane being delayed in Chicago for 24 hours, it was a nice flight. On the TV screen were a million choices of entertainment but when that all got old, I would leave the map on. Slightly different from other airlines, this one showed the time, temperature, miles flown, miles remaining, and miles to Mecca. Before takeoff and landing a prayer was spoken in Arabic and not translated. (I know this because my seatmate was Arab/American and he told me).

I got an Ayurvedic massage from a very old woman in Varkala. She spoke no English but laughed a lot; strongest arms in the world and a great massage--VERY different from any I've had here -- no partial coverage with a sheet, no body part left un-massaged. It started with me sitting in the buff on a stool, and the masseuse pouring several ounces of oil on my head. Took quite a few tepid showers to get all the oil off!!!!

Waiters were a trip. I believe every restaurant we went to had only one burner in their kitchen, because every meal came out one at a time. If there were six of us, waiters gave us 3 menus; if there were three, they gave us one. In one breakfast place (very western-looking, imitation Starbucks) the waiter took our order, left and came back with a half liter of milk, brought our coffees. Left again, came back with two yogurts (which Mags and I had ordered). Brought our yogurt, muesli and fruit; left again and came back with bananas for Michael's porridge. The whole shindig took 35 minutes; no, not to eat; to just get served!

At every train station we were swarmed by taxi drivers, touts and beggars. In the very first moment after meeting up with Maggie I was getting into the taxi and shutting my door when I saw this hand reaching in! I looked down to see a man with no legs, whom I almost killed with the taxi door! (In most of the towns, at the train stations there is a little booth staffed with a police officer whose job it is to find out where you want to go; then he tells you how much the taxi costs, you pay him and he gives you a voucher. This is for the traveller's protection from getting ripped off by the taxi driver. Twice Maggie paid the policeman with a 100 ruppee bill, took her eyes away for a nanosecond, and there was the policeman with a 50, claiming that was what she gave him. So much for protecting the well-being of the traveller!!) Once, I got so frustrated with the gang swarming us that I just yelled out "WHY do we have to have 12 people around us every time we want to do anything??!!" and a tall, handsome, elegant man dressed in the white tunic and white pants, with the embroidered pill-box hat and a beautifully trimmed gray beard, said, "Madame?! This is India!!" Of course I had to laugh. Yes, that is definitely India.

Shopping In India

Shopping in India was a trip in itself! No one would give us a firm price, of course, so all our time was spent drinking chai and trying to agree on a price for whatever little goodie we were trying to acquire. Most prices started at least twice as high as what would be considered even ballpark. The first couple of weeks, this pastime was kind of fun, but after a while it just plain got stupid. Instead of telling us a price, the vendor would pretend to figure out the very best price and show it to us on his calculator. I never figured out why he would do that, so I finally pretended I couldn't see it and he would have to tell me out loud how much he'd come up with.

One of the most interesting vendors we saw we didn't snap a photo of -- it just seemed too invasive for some reason. He was an ancient old man sitting on the road surrounded by a sundry assortment of empty bottles he'd found -- a liter of Smirnoff, a ketsup bottle...He had a plastic bucket with a honeycomb in it, and was filling these found bottles with honey and selling it. No, I didn't buy any, if you were wondering.

We went into a ginger factory. There was a large courtyard completely full of drying ginger. Inside an unlit, windowless room were two women standing next to a shoulder-high mountain of ginger, shaking a screen box full of the stuff; the air was full of tiny pieces of flying ginger, which made our photos come out with strange star-like spots on them. Of course they asked for money after we snapped photos, which we were happy to give them.

In Delhi we stayed in Pahar Ganj, a wholesale neighborhood where people from all over India come to sell their wares to reps from the tourist shops. They had rock bottom prices, but of course I'd already fallen for the silk sari in a totally tourist ripoff store, and had bought plenty of scarves. I fell in love with a bangle bracelet but was required to buy 12 due to it being wholesale. We went to another wholesale district, Sadar, where yarns and threads were sold to weavers; that was quite a learning experience, as there was no real wool, cashmere, linen or silk yarn to be found anywhere, even with an escort from one yarn shop taking us through the labyrinth of dead end alleys full of other yarn and thread wholesalers. We were educated by a vendor who said all the silk products (scarves, shawls, etc) in India were actually made from "authentic imitation silk." It is a viscose rayon, spun into a fine yarn and woven by hand (mostly) into these sumptuous items. It is a beautiful fabric, and the yarns hold dye marvelously, but, alas, it is not silk. Too bad we learned about this on our last day!

Animals in India

(First I must apologize for the sideways photo of the goats above. It was straight when I uploaded it but has gone whacky on me and I can't seem to fix it).

The animals in India have their own jobs to do. Working elephants move tourists, move lumber, move rocks. They are true laborers. We were thrilled to have the Auntie Mame experience of riding one, but felt at the same time the cruel exploitation of these magnificent beasts. The goats and cows on the streets also have their jobs. They are the garbage eaters, and can be found on every block in diligent employ. Trash is handled, in the small towns we were in, by first the livestock and only later by humans, who sweep it into piles and burn it. There is always the smell of burning trash, wherever you go. In Delhi I did see a government garbage truck, but only one, and it didn't make a dent. The "trash" created by the cows is collected and dried in the sun, to be used later for cooking fuel. Garbage in, garbage out.

India!

I will not have much time to write today, but wanted to let my friends know that after 55 hours of travel we made it to India. The plane in Chicago got stuck with technical problems, and after sitting there for almost 5 hours we were sent to hotels and started the journey 22 hours later.
We flew through Abu Dhabi which was an amazing sight from the air -- flying over gorgeous blue ocean and suddenly seeing nothing but sand for as far as the eye could see. Pretty airport, but out in the middle of nowhere!
We arrived in Trivandrum at 5 AM to find thousands of people outside the airport -- taxi drivers, families awaiting arrivals...seriously thousands of people there, and there was my 6 foot tall Maggie, standing above everyone else, smiling and waving like crazy! What a wonderful sight!
We hopped into a taxi to the train station -- also crowded and bustling with life at that hour on a Sunday morning. The train was a decrepit old thing but went really fast nonetheless. We got off in Varkala and grabbed a tuk tuk, which is basically a three wheeled cycle with a roof and a back seat, powered by a lawn mover engine. Thankfully, I couldn't really see the road as the driver went zooming around town to our hotel. We are in the Santa Claus hotel, on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It has a/c and a private bath, which is a little room with a miniature sink, toilet, and shower all together so everything gets wet when you take a shower. We are very very happy to have it!
The beach is below a long long flight of uneven cement stairs. The cliff is basically where everyone throws their trash, which is pretty much what I expected in India. The water is deliciously warm but with huge waves and a vicious undertow. We rented lounge chairs and umbrellas, and many mangy dogs came to enjoy the shade under our chairs. When it got too hot even for them, they sauntered off to take a dip in the ocean -- I've never seen a dog do that before!!
Along the walkway at the top of the cliff, where our hotel is, are dozens of little shops, restaurants, and tiny hotels like ours. Really really cute little strip, with a view that knocks your socks off. Of course I am looking at all the goodies for sale and not looking at the ocean! Silly me.
Off to dinner soon, and then hopefully a long and luscious night's sleep!

Packing

Oh I used to be such a good packer!!! It was so easy, back in the day. Then I started cruising, or worse, started travelling to diverse locations -- some hot, some cold, some rainy; all on the same trip. And of course when I go back to Pamplona I have to look nice, so there's a problem right there!

This India trip is different. First of all, it is going to be hot hot hot, so I don't need a bunch of stuff for cold weather. And Indians are so colorful, everything goes with everything! And clothes are so cheap there, I can buy whatever I want. Therefore, I have packed 3 bottoms and 5 tops. Amazing! Still, there is the huge problem of the electronics.

Charger for the phone, charger for the iPod Touch, charger for the camera. Plugs for the chargers, and converters. Cable to attach the Touch to a computer. Plug that fits the airplane seat in case it has two holes instead of one for my headset.

There are no fewer than six books loaded onto my Touch. I LOVE it!! I don't need to turn on a light in order to read, and I don't need to carry a ton of books. What a great little toy! My headphones have a microphone, and I've downloaded Skype, so I can use it to call people even tho it's not an iPhone. Genius. Worse - I can buy episodes of the shows I am addicted to for only $1.99, so I won't miss anything. That is pathetic, I know.

So, back to packing: we have decided to travel with backpacks, on the advice of many friends who have travelled in India. Even though I have so few clothes, I have so much other crap that the pack weighs 20 lbs and has very little room for purchases! All soft items are in oversized ziplock baggies with all the air squeezed out, and I'm only bringing two pairs of shoes, so I need to see if there's anything I can jettison. A lot of hard stuff like hand sanitizer, sunscreen, bug spray, and aforementioned electronics -- they take up a lot of room! Yes, of course I know I can buy all that over there, but then I'd still need to have space to pack it when we move from town to town.

Wish me luck. What a fabulous adventure ahead!

Oscars 2010

Our annual Oscar party was a great success! I am pretty sure I have the best guest list in all the land. My peeps really come through in their enthusiasm and imagination. This is not the easiest party in the world to host, so I need all the help I can get from my peeps.

The first Oscar party we threw was in 2002, one year after Bjork wore that crazy swan dress, remember? I wore an evening gown but created a swan apron out of fuzzy fabric and it cracked everyone up. That was when I got the idea of having guests dress like characters from one of the current movies. They could also dress as "seat fillers" in tuxes and evening gowns. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to see the husbands all decked out in finery -- so rare in the life we live here in suburbia. I was Coco before Chanel but it was pretty dorky.

Oscar is a gold styrofoam wig head who plays a key role as centerpiece on the buffet. The year of The Aviator he wore a leather flight helmet, goggles, and a white scarf. Last year I found this crazy curly beige yarn and made The Wrestler's wig, with a white towel around his neck. Of course I forget to take photos; as the hostess I am pretty busy and just never seem to remember. We started collecting Hollywood memorabilia and now have a good supply of decorations. Also for The Aviator we lined up a dozen jars of apple juice around the TV but no one got it until the show was half over.

Last year was the first time we asked for pot luck additions. We created a prize category of how well the food matched a movie. The winner (by vote) was Benjamin Button Stuffed Mushrooms. My guests are just so creative!! Of course I made Vicky Christina Barcelona paella. This year we had three guests dressed as Julia Child (and one as Julie) and I made Julia's boef bourguignon. One guest, dressed in a business suit and dragging a rolling carry-on, made boxes of Up in the Airplane snacks, all packaged perfectly in individually wrapped cellophane bags, all hand-made by her. Amazing. Still, she didn't win the food category because another guest came up with Hurt Locker MRE brownie bombs!! She made these killer brownies and wrapped each one in a tinfoil packet with a PERFECT MRE label on the front!!! Amazing. We also had Up in the Airport pizza, Avatar blue jello salad, Crazy Heart enchiladas, and Basterds strudel. Are my guests great or what??

My Cat

In my very first post I mention being owned by a cat, the world's most unsatisfactory cat to be exact. George (whose original name was Giorgio, after a rather flamboyant entertainer in Mazatlan) is now 17 years old and a marvel of perseverance. This cat is the Original Scaredy Cat. My sister has only seen him a handful of times. The second anyone comes through the front door, this cat is downstairs in the basement in some hidey-hole I've never found, where he stays until the All Clear. He is difficult to love. We make fun of him and what a stupid pet he has been all these years.

For some reason we have switched from dry food to canned, and he has gone crazy-in-love with the canned food. He eats non-stop, and fills his litter box with the results. However, he is skinny as can be -- petting him is like petting a cat skeleton wearing an old toupee -- so I think he isn't long for this world. He has become very affectionate with me in the past couple of years, but still jumps off my lap and runs if I sneeze or move quickly. And now, well, now we are leaving for three weeks and I am worried about him! We used to have a neighbor kid come in to feed him. She has never actually seen him of course, but knew he existed because the food would go down and the litter box would fill up. But she doesn't want to be responsible for him anymore; he really could croak any time now. And now, I'm worried about him being alone for three weeks. Funny, after all these years of him being such a dumb pet, so detached, now I feel a great deal of affection for him. He is very good at being alone, but since becoming so attached to me lately, maybe he won't do as well this time. Poor Georgie.

Senior Tennis

I have been playing tennis for a couple of years with the senior breakfast league (mixed doubles). Although you have to belong to the USTA to join, they don't count your wins/losses towards your ranking. I have made two friends on the league who are really neat people, and the rest are quite nice, mostly. To join senior tennis you can be as young as 49. Most of these guys are in their 60's, I'd say. Every season the captains get new teams; no one really wants to captain so once you are sucked into that, you're basically stuck. My captain last summer was really out to win, so once she asked me not to play in order to bring in a ringer. That tells you a couple things; I'm not the best player of the bunch, and it can all get pretty cutthroat.

My captain usually figures out early on that I need to be paired with someone who actually moves; my feet have been glued to the court since I started playing back when I was 42. My partner has to cover about 80% of the court, and then s/he has to be able to actually DO something with the ball once he/she gets to it. I tell my partners I am just the eye candy. Last Tuesday I was paired with the 88 year old (we all take turns). Our opponents were both 79. Since I am such a crappy player, I have developed a nasty drop shot that my 40 year old friends can get to, but the seniors sitting on the baseline cannot. You could call it the original "cheap shot." I feel bad using it against older opponents, but hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. We won our match, and my partner put his arm around my shoulder and said "that's the first match I've won in three years!" Then he said something that, after I laughed out loud, I contemplated for a long time. He said, "You run like the wind!" (Cracks me up just typing that line!!) But you see, it's all in our perception. To an 88 year old, I run like the wind. To others, I am a slug. So, will the real Holly please stand up?

More About Change

I wrote this essay a couple years ago for a writing class. The assignment was to write about changes. Some of it I've already told in this blog; thanks for your patience with me.

I went to Spain when I was 18. I was going to college in Pamplona, it was 1970 and Franco was still alive. Spain in 1970 was like America in the fifties, and Pamplona even more so. After a couple of years there, I decided it was time to run with the bulls during their fiesta. Of course women weren’t allowed to run, so I disguised myself as best I could and popped out in front of the bulls at the last minute. After it was over, I let my long hair out of my cap and a guy said to me “you’ve got balls” and I said, “more than you, kiddo, more than you.”

I tell this story a lot. Boomers my age usually say something like “wow, you are so cool!” and the kids my kids’ age say “wow, you were so cool!” and it is that were that scratches against my psyche like an old wool sweater. ‘Whaddaya mean, were?’ I silently demand.

I have a lot of stories like that one. In my twenties I led a life of adventure, though you wouldn’t know it to look at me. And there’s the rub. Who is this person who has taken over Holly? What happened when I wasn’t looking? I keep the light kind of dim in my bathroom, but occasionally I see myself in good lighting and really, I am always surprised at who is looking back at me. Why, it’s my great Aunt Genevieve! When did my skin stop fitting me?

We baby boomers are a self-centered bunch. How could we not be? The media and advertising have catered to us for the past 40 years. Suddenly we are no longer the darlings, and it is no longer a surprise when we see the toys we grew up with on display in a museum. My original Barbie doll, they say, is worth a thousand bucks, but there she sits, tossed on a shelf in my closet, just as she was five decades ago, as if I were going to pull her down and play with her any minute.

I visited a historic building in my hometown last year. It houses the original Spirit of ’76 painting, the one with the two drummers and the fife player, marching to war. There are a lot of seafaring objects from when Marblehead was dependent upon fishermen and whalers for its livelihood. There, in one of the cases was a photograph of a Girl Scout troop visiting Washington, DC, and it was a picture of MY troop, and there I was. I am now officially a Museum Artifact.

There are moments when I do not see the humor in any of this. Almost mourning the loss of the young woman who was Holly, I am stunned to realize I have friends who have never seen me without glasses, or without these thighs! I remember turning heads as I strutted down the street in a miniskirt, as if I owned the world. I was tall and thin and young; I did.

A young friend saw the movie Titanic and we talked about it. I asked him if he can now look at old ladies in a different light, with stories and the possibility that maybe, long ago, they were beautiful. He looked at me quizzically for a second, but then said “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can.” Looking at people we so easily judge, pass them off as middle aged or old, and see only age, nothing more. As if that person were born the age they are as we are looking at them. The charm of people is the history they have, but more than that, it is the person they see within themselves.

I went back to Pamplona again; met up with my daughter there, the one who looks like me, the one who loves my stories. She had spent the month of June backpacking through Europe. She is following in her mom’s path, only better. There in the plaza we met up with a dear friend, one of the most well-respected and well-known runners, who threw his arms around me in a giant hug, looked over my shoulder and saw my daughter. “I was SO in love with your mother!” he said. He had never met her, but there she was, standing in my town, with my face, which he knew and loved, at twenty.

Anticipation

When I was in the sixth grade I was given a box of flashcards of the Wonders of the World. When I saw the picture of the Taj Mahal, I promised myself I would go there one day. Almost a half-century later, I will be standing in front of the Taj Mahal! This upcoming trip is both exciting and frightening. 26 hours on an airplane, and I anticipate that to be pretty much hell. But the countryside of India, the beaches, the national parks with their fabulous tigers and elephants, the bazaars and the food -- all of that will make for an exciting adventure! The crowds, the poverty, the dirt, the traffic -- not so much.

Anticipation. In my recent weight-loss attempt, I anticipated that in 12 weeks I would lose at least 20 pounds, but it didn't work out that way. I did lose 10, however, through Thanksgiving, a cruise, a Florida vacation, my birthday, Christmas and New Years. I can't complain, since I did so little exercise throughout that time that to lose any weight at all is practically a miracle. Another 12 week program starts this week, with new participants and several from the previous group. Maybe I will get psyched to actually exercise! I have been hiking with a 20 pound pack, in anticipation of the India trip; I do NOT want to be the fat old lady who slows everyone down!!