Just a few years ago, I upgraded to a digital HD camcorder and what a change it was. A month ago, I got a new iPhone 6 and the video is now so good, my camcorder is officially a paperweight. Here's a quickie I shot AND EDITED all on my iPhone last weekend. Not sure we're there yet, but we're within striking distance of the smartphone turning just about every camera, computer etc. into a paperweight. Enjoy!
The Special Bouquet of Gummy Bears /
There's always something when you travel with kids. Whether it's a nosebleed in customs (the most recent trip), or a yeast infection (yes, I'm dealing with that one on this time around--doctor Dad is in the house), there's always something unexpected to keep it, shall we say... interesting. There's one constant with my kids though, and it's motion sickness. And my oh my, how nasty that can be.
Samantha is the Jedi master of barf. She sneaks up on you quietly, using the Force to her best advantage and then when you least expect it, hurls the most vile concoction of gastrointestinal effluent like a light sabre to your torso, leaving you stunned and shocked that you didn't see it coming. She's managed to coat me on no less than 3 continents, in practically every car we've owned or rented. There was the dried apricot episode in the Costa Del Sol of Spain, and who can forget the taxi ride to our hotel after a 14 hour flight from Heathrow to Mauritius whereupon we begged the taxi driver to pull over on the windy one lane roads through fields of sugarcane. He didn't, and Samantha reciprocated the indifference with projectile vomit of half-digested blackberries. His disgust was met by me with an equally insistent "I told you to pull over." I doubt he'll make that mistake again.
The 2007 Virgin Airlines flight from LA to Heathrow was another standout. Samantha held it together through an admittedly turbulent approach and landing, only to surrender the contents of her stomach into my lap as the plane taxied to the gate. It was on that particular trip that I learned to always pack a change of clothes in my carry on bag. I can't predict it or prevent it, but at least I'm prepared.
And those are just the highlights. I now keep air sickness bags in the backseat as a precaution on every camping trip and while Samantha has matured not to the point of outgrowing the propensity to spill her guts--now she's at least able to get it into the bag--Parker has picked up the mantle with the eagerness of an apprentice hellbent on besting his master.
That's what he did on Friday afternoon. After a brutal drive through the Central Valley with temperatures topping 104, and temperatures inside our vintage car beating that by a healthy margin, with a massive 389 V-8 heating up the air blowing through the vents, I succumbed to the incessant supplication from the back seat to stop and buy gummy bears. I knew better, but the Jedi mind trick is effective on the weak. They were so persistent that I broke down, perusing the candy aisle of the 7-Eleven and weighing the choices of Trolli, Haribo and Sour Patch Kids as a sommelier might pair wine with a diner's choice of main course. I find that upon regurgitation, Trolli maintains a solid, if chunky, consistency with a bouquet of tropical fruit, while Haribo tends to semi-dissolve into sticky strands with aromas of ripe fruit and cassis. We went with the Haribo.
A few minutes after entering the park, Highway 41 coils up into a tangle of hairpin turns and switchbacks. Having experienced this before, I slowed to a crawl and asked the children every mile or so if they felt ill or if I was going too fast. "All good" was the report from the back seat. "I've got this one," I said to myself. Not gonna happen this time.
Right about the time that thought was gestating in my brain, Samantha shrieked from the back and I shot a look in the rear view mirror just in time to see Parker look up from his iPad, his too-big headphones giving his head a silly, comic book appearance. He was white and gagging. And then, before I could react, his mouth opened and a Linda Blair-like stream of puke fell like a waterfall, directly onto his iPad, covering the screen playing Empire Strikes Back and cascading between his legs, down the seat and onto the floor. My disgust was, I admit, tinged with admiration for this spectacular sneak-attack and the ferocity with which he had just christened this 55 year old car with the Beck children's special brand of gummy vin de table. Obi-Wan Samantha has taught him well.
Wax On, Wax Off /
Now that we're back from the big Paris trip, the next date on the calendar is Hawaii. We're leaving for Kona on the 7th of August and returning on the 15th, and then a little over 24 hours after that, we leave on the mother of all road trips, a 3-1/2 week, 3,000 mile blacktop beatdown of 6 states and 5 national parks. Most people of sound mind would rent an RV or maybe an Escalade with a full AV suite and hands free cruise control. That's not how I roll. No, I'm taking this one down old school, in a two-tone, Shelltone Ivory over Shoreline Gold 1960 Pontiac Star Chief.
It wasn't supposed to be this car. I spent the last 2+ years restoring a 1955 Pontiac that was intended to be the epic road trip machine. Trouble was, by the time I was done, it wasn't a driver anymore, but a show car. My dad was tired of showing his 1967 Nova and here was a freshly restored show car that I didn't want to subject to the inevitable wear and tear that such a trip would entail. So a few months ago, I very carefully delivered it to him in Indiana on "permanent loan." He would get more enjoyment from the car than I would with it sitting in my garage.
And indeed he has. It's been a rainy summer in Indiana so a number of shows have been canceled but of the handful he's taken it to, the response has been fantastic. He's still looking for the elusive "best of show" trophy but at the Ray Skilman show in Indianapolis, one of the largest of the summer, out of 225 cars, the '55 scored inside the top 20 and took home the "American Pride" award. Not bad.
But I digress... The goal this week was to get this 1960 Pontiac ready for a road trip. According to the service records, the last time this car saw any significant mileage, Walter Mondale was running for president, so it's no mean feat. I've been through most of the basic checkup items, did a complete tuneup and inspection, changed all the fluids, fixed some electrical gremlins and have toured the neighborhood a few times. And yesterday and today, I polished all the chrome and paint, which may not sound like a big deal, but when you're working with 55 year old lacquer paint that can easily be burned with power tools, it's more art conservation than wax job. If your arm doesn't feel like it's going to fall out of its socket, you're doing it wrong.
I'm happy to say however that it's ready to go, and Friday morning I'm taking the chillins up to Yosemite for a camping weekend in the first and only test run she'll have before the big one. I figure if it's going to break, it will do so on this 14 hour "roast"trip through the infernal Central Valley. And if it does, I'll have all of 4 days to fix whatever it is before we leave for Hawaii. Wish me luck!
Don't you want to put on some Bermuda shorts and aviator sunglasses when you see this? Don Draper would be right at home behind the wheel. Betty, can you bring me a martini?
Samantha, With Your Nose So Bright... aka How to Fly Through Customs /
We spent the last few precious days in Paris pretending like we'd never seen it before. We did some shopping and the Bateaux Parisiens, a 45 minute boat ride that runs the length of the Seine from the Eiffel Tower to the Isle de la Cite. The highlight however was a long evening spent with some new friends from the International School of Paris, the french school where Samantha and Parker spent the past couple of weeks.
We met Farrah and Russell at dropoff on the first day of school. Expats, even if you're just an expat for a couple of weeks, have a connection that's hard to explain. We made some of our best friends while we lived in London; there's something about the intensity of the experience that creates a bond that is special and lasting. So when we bumped into Farrah and Russell, we slipped back into the old expat mode and just started chatting about a whole variety of subjects, so much so that Samantha and their daughter Haley assumed we were old friends. We made a plan to get together for dinner but it didn't happen until the Friday night before we left. Russell had already flown back to D.C. to go back to work (I KNOW...) but Farrah's cousin Elizabeth arrived to take his place.
We met at their place near the George Cinq and had a few bottles of wine, before heading to a nearby Italian restaurant where we met Lendyl and Michael, who were visiting from Sydney and also had their daughters enrolled in the school. It was a magical evening. It's a self-selecting group who are willing to live abroad or travel extensively, and they tend to be an interesting lot. Michael was a derivatives trader for 12 years before quitting his job, moving to Paris for 9 months and then back to a farm about 3-1/2 hours outside of Sydney where he is now growing his own food and considering opening a farm-to-table restaurant. Farrah was born in the U.S. but raised in Venezuela. She lived in several places in Europe, including Paris, before deciding that she didn't want to be "one of those women with a baguette under her arm," and moved to the U.S. From there she got into real estate in Virginia, where she met Russell, who is a serial entrepreneur who works on cyber security for the DoD. Elizabeth is a graphic designer for a Venezuelan multinational who has traveled all over but has chosen to stay in Venezuela despite its well-publicized issues. Throughout the evening, the wine flowed and the conversation was musical, slipping between Spanish, French, Italian and English, and not insignificantly, the children played beautifully until past midnight. I wish every evening could be like this--it was one to remember.
The flight back was one to remember as well. Every trip to France involves at least one experience that is quintessentially French. Usually it involves someone telling you that something is impossible, rolling their eyes and puffing their cheeks in a long sigh that communicates in no uncertain terms that the thing you want is not going to happen. Ever. I had been noting the conspicuous absence of this particular experience on this trip but then, at the airport, we waited in a long line to check in, only to find that the automated kiosk directed us to see an agent. Another 20 minute queue to reach the agent resulted in a lot of computer tapping punctuated by long pauses and sighs, followed by a shrug and a waive off to the only person who seemed capable of solving such problems, a polite bespectacled, middle-aged man at the end of a long line of agents. Another 20 minute queue. Apparently the Air France reservation system thought we were not permitted to have baggage. That's right, they didn't want us to pay, but rather they thought we weren't permitted to have baggage. So after a short back and forth with the man, wherein we pointed out that not being permitted to have baggage was perhaps the silliest thing ever (and obviously Air France had no problem with us bringing the same bags on the way OVER), the man shrugged in agreement and said, "I don't ask questions anymore. I give up." With a flick of his wrist, our bags were tagged and on the way. Impossible, but it was done. Time to sit back and read a magazine on the flight, right? Not so much.
The other thing that an international trip with kids usually involves is some sort of in-flight mishap. Now, I've been pooped on, peed on, thrown up on (that's a separate and pretty gross story), but this one was new. About 7 hours into the flight, Samantha got a nosebleed. She's prone to them and they can be pretty bad sometimes, but when you add the pressure change and the dry air at 37,000 feet, this one was a beaut. On and off for the next few hours, we were up getting napkins, wiping off her clothes, our hands, holding her head back, the whole drill.
By the time we landed, we looked like we'd been trying to close an artery in the ER. We had a big bag of bloody napkins and Samantha had crusted blood all over her face. We deplaned, got the shuttle to the Tom Bradley terminal and grabbed the luggage. Parker, who had played Minecraft for the last 12 hours straight, collapsed in a heap on top of the luggage. So in addition to the mountain of belongings that we always seem to have with us (another Americanism), I also had 45 pounds of dead weight in one arm. Then, as we were limping our way to the finish line of passport control, Samantha decided to stop at the bathroom to wipe her face. This proved to be a fateful decision.
A few minutes later, sandwiched into a snaking mass of humanity, the sleeping blood monster in Samantha's nose that had been angered by the face-washing ruptured with demonic fury. It gushed out first into her cupped hands, then onto the floor. Within seconds, the people around us began to step back. From the perspective of the usually brain-dead agents, either someone was about to breakdance or there was a "situation" developing. Apparently they are ready for both, because they woke up in a hurry. Within seconds, we were the only thing happening in Tom Bradley. "Oh, my goodness," they said as I pulled the last tissues from my pockets with my free hand, dropping the luggage but fortunately maintaining my grasp on my unconscious mouth-breathing son. "Forget about that," they said to Quimby as she fumbled with the newly-installed automated passport scanner/photo booth. Samantha had managed to get her picture taken mid-rupture and for the brief second the photo flashed on the screen, what I saw can only be described as graphic. I wish I had that photo. Google Glass would have been epic here. Samantha sobbed with her neck craned over her hands that she wanted to go home. Indeed, me too, and never more than this moment. "Do you need a medic?" they asked. I'm from the Midwest, and yeah, it looked like Valentine's Day Massacre with the white tile floor and everything, but it's a nosebleed. Nobody's going home in a bag. "What do you need?" the next agent asked. It turned out, what I really needed was an open-ended question. "I need to get through this line and get her home," I said. And with that, the crowd parted like the Red Sea (pun intended). The agents handed us a wad of paper towels, and led us past the scores of gawking slack-jawed tourists. The agent in the glass cubicle stamped our passports in silent horror and then grimaced as she pointed us to the bathroom. Spreading biohazards in a crowded international airport wasn't exactly the way I like to end a trip, but it's a bloody effective way (there I did it again) of clearing customs. We're ba-aaack!
The Tell /
I was sitting on a curb with Parker the other day waiting for Quimby and Samantha to use the toilet, when two older French women approached me to ask directions. They asked if I spoke French (they knew immediately I wasn't from these here parts) and I said en Francais "a little". They proceeded to ask in French where the Bois du Bologne was and I said as best I could, "take a left and go about 100 meters. It's on the right." My French is absolutely terrible and believe me, this was just about the limit of my abilities. The women thanked me and began to walk away. Just before they turned the corner, one of the women turned and asked "Canadian?" "No," I said in French again, "I am an American." She stood there for a moment and looked at me quizzically, her eyes scanning me. After a moment, she shrugged and said "huh," then walked away in disbelief.
On the days when I would take the Tube from Parson's Green to Knightsbridge, I would pass the time (there was plenty of it--there seemed to be constant delays) by playing a game of "spot the foreigner". Spotting the foreigner usually wasn't hard, the hard part was picking out where they were from and straining to hear the language or accent to see if you were correct. I had to look carefully for the tells for all but the Americans. They were a piece of cake.
As soon as she walked away, I looked myself over and went through the list. It wasn't a slam dunk, but thought I fit the American profile reasonably well. And yet, this woman was pretty sure I wasn't. What was throwing her off? If there had been any doubt, my accent surely gave me away. But choosing Canadian? Nine times out of ten you'd be wrong with that guess unless there was something that clearly didn't fit the American stereotype. My guess is that because Canada has a significant French-speaking population, Canadians may be more willing to fumble in French than Americans. Most Americans (I suspect) would simply say "I don't speak French" and be done with it. Quimby has a different theory. She thinks it was because I was alone. "Americans," she says, "tend run in packs, especially when their language skills are as poor as yours." Booyakasha! I told you my French was bad. We'll never know, but it was a fascinating little exchange. If you want to look a little less American (maybe a little more Canadian?) the next time you're out and about in the world, here's my list of American "tells".
1) You smile too much. Americans are the smiliest people in the world. Everything is "awesome" and the more uncomfortable we get, it seems the smilier we become. We're like the labrador retrievers of tourists; we knock things over and generally make a mess, but because we're smiling all the time, people seem to like us anyway.
2) Your teeth are too white. Americans love their perfect, straight and oh-so-white teeth. When you smile (which is all the time, see above), it's like an atom bomb just went off. Before you go abroad next time, spend a week gargling espresso and red wine before bedtime. You'll look just that much less American.
3) Hawaiian shirts. If you're wearing a Hawaiian shirt, 100 out of 100 times you're American. Game over.
4) You're wearing a fanny pack. These are an exclusively American accessory. If you want to make a Brit bite his lip in restrained laughter, refer to your "fanny pack" repeatedly in conversation.
5) You're covered in advertising that isn't football (soccer) related. If that's not enough of a giveaway, if it's golf advertising, then it's done. American. All. Day. Long.
6) Americans run in packs. You'll often see groups of college-age or younger nationalities in herds, but after a certain age, that seems to fade out. Americans do the couples-en-vacance thing. Also, the less we know of the language, the more we Americans run in groups. Big, awesome, smiley, Hawaiian shirt-wearing, fanny pack sporting, groups of Titleist-capped Americans.
Bastille Day /
Nearly a million people gather at the Eiffel Tower on Quatorze Juillet each year to celebrate the overthrow of the monarchy and the formation of the French Republic. It was a bloody mess, and they changed their mind a couple times, restored the king, flirted with tyranny and Napoleonic conquest and all the rest, but July 14, 1789 is the moment that started it all, and the French mark it in style. So without further ado, here's the Iron Lady, La Dame de Fer, all dressed in her evening gown. It's the 2-1/2 minute firework finale of a day-long, full-throttle middle finger to kings everywhere. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!