Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Grilling Pizza

      One silver lining of quarantining is that my cooking game is getting more diverse and adventurous.  More Indian food, more vegetarian options, and now, … grilling pizza.  I know: grilling a pizza isn’t exactly adventurous, people have been doing it forever!  But in this house, homemade pizza was always slipped gently into the oven.  When you spent time and effort making something as lovely as a pizza, why risk it on the variability of a charcoal grill?

      Flavor of course.  Flavor is the reason you grill anything on a charcoal grill.  Not a propane grill – that’s just an outdoor extension of the stove.  Charcoal grilling on a ceramic grill that heats up beyond oven temperatures when closed and the coals are bright orange and alive.  That’s ancient cooking right there –  none of this propane-fueled regulated blandness, thank you.  And that’s what I brought my homemade pizzas out to.  That’s right: pizzas.  Plural.  If you’re going to use charcoal, make the most of the resource.

      The first attempt was a traditional cheese pizza with dough spread thinly across a large, perforated pan that I’ve had since college.  This baby has seen everything in it’s time…  everything but a charcoal grill anyway.  Simple and classic cheese pizza recipe, thin crust, thin layer of sauce, generous layer of cheese, done.  My concern with this first pizza was the grill temperature.  I waited until it dropped below 500 degrees Fahrenheit before putting the pizza on the grill, and watched it carefully to make sure it didn’t just erupt into flames.  Using a grill spatula, I’d gently lift up an edge, inspect and spin it and try again.  Can’t be too careful with that first pizza.  And it turned out to be an excellent first attempt.  Congrats!  We won’t be ordering pizza to replace a burnt offering!

      The second pizza was slightly more daring: A thicker crust on a stone instead of a perforated pan.  This one had thinly sliced green peppers and chicken sausage spread on top.  And generally the results were pretty good.  Thicker crust on a stone meant risking an uneven, doughy crust in some places.  That proved to be the case in one particularly thick spot.  If it were a restaurant I might have sent it back, but in my backyard it was close enough.  Two large pizzas and leftovers for lunch.  And no sacrificial lambs.  Not a bad first effort!

      2020, for all the suffering and frustration, has offered opportunities to see the world in a different way.  Maybe grilling a pizza isn’t exactly tackling social justice, but it’s a step away from the norm.  And now I’m thinking about what else I can grill.  So grilling pizza became one very small measure of audacity that worked out.  I might not ever have tried it in a normal year when getting dinner done after a long day away from home was a task.  But 2020 replaced what is fast and easy? with what is going to be really interesting to try?  And that’s not such a bad thing at all. A moment of fun experimentation with relatively low stakes.  We can all use more fun this year.  

    • Capturing the Light

      There is a scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty where Walter Mitty looks at a picture of Sean O’Connell.  Walter is the daydreaming, play life straight ahead guy, Sean is the bold, adventurous photographer who masterfully dances on the edge between chaos and order.  Walter looks at the picture of Sean looking back at him and sees Sean waving to him “Come on, already!” as Wake Up by Arcade Fire begins to play.  I find it impossible to not be stirred up by this scene, no matter how many times I’ve watched it.  Because that’s all of us who play life straight ahead, looking at the bold and adventurous and wanting someone in that world to look us in the eye and tell us, “Come on, already!”  Mostly we forget that we can say it to ourselves.

      I took my typical plunge into deep water this morning and watched the sun beams streaming through the forest, lighting up each leaf it landed on in thousands of fluttering florescent green glowing congregation of the faithful.  Those who remained in shadow seemed to gaze longingly at the brilliant dancers, and I understood the look as my own.  I confess I’m awestruck at moments like that, and floated in the water watching the light probe deeper into the forest and continue the dance beyond my line of sight.  Light and shadow and me treading on the surface, floating in wonder.   It occurred to me at that moment that writing is capturing the light, and having the audacity to try.  There was better poetry in that moment, and I don’t quite have the words to reveal it to the world.  But I recognized it nonetheless and work to serve the muse who patiently awaits my contribution.

      I’ve been pondering the word audacity since I woke up this morning, but I don’t feel like it’s a word I can own.  After all, I’m not living an audacious life.  I fancy myself bold and audacious, but really I’m rather conservative in every day living.  I do audacious things on occasion – little exclamation points on a moment as I’ve written about previously.  But upon further review I’m more Walter than Sean.  I suppose most of us are, and that’s the appeal of a Walter Mitty moment.

      Whenever the fog of life clogs my line of sight I put on those noise cancelling headphones and watch Arcade Fire perform Wake Up at the Reading Festival and I’m jolted to clarity.  I suppose that’s what plunging into water does for me too.  An immediate state change.  An opportunity to reset.  But ultimately I come back to the reality that I’m still in the Walter skin.  And I choose to stay in it.  Secret conspiracies for audacious living remain, but Sean hasn’t waved vigorously enough to shake the inertia just yet.  Come on, already!  Absolutely, but could you wait for tomorrow?  I’ve got to finish this project I’m working on.  That wouldn’t be a very good movie at all, would it?

      Audacity has a negative connotation, but I’m rather fond of the positive connotation.  It derives from Latin, audacia  and means daring, boldness, and courage.  Three traits we’d all like to think we have in abundance.  Like most people, I’m chafing at the bit, restless at the quarantine and the impact on travel and getting out there.  It’s hard to live audaciously when you aren’t allowed to cross borders.  But then again, maybe it’s just waiting for you to wake up and get to it already.  Audaciousness is capturing the light within ourselves and showing it to the world.  Highlighting our spirit within for the world to see.  It seems you don’t have to cross borders to be audacious.  You just have to get to it.  Cue the music.

       

    • The Second Best Time is Now

      “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

      Today is June 15th, which is the halfway point of the month that concludes the halfway point of the year.  The first half of 2020 felt like a decade with the massive shifts happening in the world.  I won’t subject you to a retelling of the tale now as you’re quite familiar with the journey we’ve been on.  If there’s a silver lining during this first half of the year, it’s the re-focusing on what’s important.  It’s the time with family and friends and looking at the simple things we’ve taken for granted, like going out for dinner or to a concert.

      I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with immediate family, regret the opportunities lost, and look forward to getting back to it when there’s less risk to others.  Risk to others is always the calculus, not risk to myself.  I wear a mask in crowded places and wonder at the growing crowd of people who aren’t wearing one.  We aren’t there just yet folks, as much as we want to be.

      I’ve completed a long list of home improvement tasks and find that the list doesn’t get shorter.  Still, I walk around and I’m less inclined to say to myself I need to get to that someday when I look at a wall or ceiling or some other nook and cranny of this place I spend so much time in now.  Better weather has opened up an entirely new canvas for improvement.  It’s all a work in progress, and will continue until the pandemic releases its hold on us.

      I’ve taken to rowing 5000 meters at lunchtime every workday.  Weekends are reserved for other activity with the nicer weather.  Rowing replaced walking at lunchtime because it’s more efficient and there’s a timeless feeling I get when I’m on the rowing ergometer.  It could be 2020, or it could be 1990, the only thing that changes are the splits and the soreness afterwards.

      I’m ever so slowly learning French, and I’ve added Portuguese as well.  I have an eye on the world and will return to travel again someday, and speaking one language is simply not enough.  There are place to visit far from the tourist traps, where people expect some measure of knowledge of their language.  Je dois les rencontrer à mi-chemin – I’ve got to meet them halfway.  France is to be expected, but I also feel the pull of Portugal and Brazil.  And so I’ve added a third language, even before I’ve mastered the second.  Aprendi a seguir uma paixão e ver aonde ela leva – I’ve learned to follow a passion and see where it leads you.

      I’ve checked a few important boxes in my job that I’m pleased with and see all that might have been if only the world were normal. But it’s not normal and time flies relentlessly by anyway.  Some of the biggest project I was tracking have stalled in the quicksand of social isolation.  Even as things ramp up they may be a long way from where they should have been.  I’m grateful to work for a company that views the world through a long lens and measures its value by the people who work for it.

      And so we approach the second half of 2020, and more epochal moments are surely in store for us all.  There’s an election coming up in America.  Professional sports are tentatively starting up again.  People are dipping a toe back in the waters to see just how cold it really is.  And I find myself thinking about the trees I haven’t planted:

      When I was 18 I was a certified SCUBA diver.  And then I went to college and discovered rowing and girls and I gently tucked away the mask and fins and never went back to it again.  I’m told that the sport of diving is suffering a decline as people find other ways to spend time and disposable income.  I recognize the pull away from the water that’s held me away since I was a teenager, but also hear the siren call of the deep dive.  I’m going back to the deep water again, and depending on restrictions around COVID-19 I’ll do it in the second half of 2020.

      There’s another siren that’s been calling me for years, and it’s hiking.  I’ve long talked of hiking the Appalachian Trail and hold that out as my 60th birthday present to myself, when I get there.  But in the meantime I’m not hiking any other trail most days.  This won’t do at all.  I’m going back to the mountains in 2020, but not chasing others around.  I’m going to return to the 48 4000 footers in New Hampshire at my own pace, and check this box that’s been nagging me since I was a kid.

      So there you go: My own small version of Navy SEAL training.  Top of the mountains to the bottom of the sea.  Self-paced and documented.  Multilingual, multidimensional and adventurous in spirit.  Beats painting another room.  As my son would say, let’s go!

       

    • The Bay

      “But water is a question, so many living things in it,
      but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming
      generosity, how can they write you out?”
      – Mary Oliver, Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

      These past few days I’ve gotten re-acquainted with our old family friend Buzzards Bay.  This particular body of water has always been a living force that demands attention. And I’ve paid attention. A steady stream of boats and ships and barges move across the surface. Osprey hover above until the thrilling moment they plunge to the water for a fish. Cormorants work their drama under the surface, swimming about in our world until they suddenly dive underwater in search of fish, then surface in unpredictable places that betray the chase that happened below. There’s always something to pay attention to around the bay, so full of life and activity in the warmer months, but especially I pay attention to the Bay itself.

      The tides sweep in and out, marked by ripples in the channel and the pull of boats on moorings. Big beach, tiny beach, big beach, tiny beach over and over again in a timeless gravity dance with the moon.  The tide is a big topic around these parts, whether people go to the beach or not.  I greatly prefer the ease of a high tide, but plunge in either way.  It only changes how far I walk.

      Above all, the Bay is a mother, birthing and hosting millions of lives every year in her nutrient-rich waters.  Like a mother she tolerates a lot from the kids playing games around her.  The Bay is a chameleon: changing colors with the sky. A palette of blue, green, silver, gold, orange and dark gray flecked in white announce the mood of this old girl, and you’d best pay attention. She has no patience for those who don’t respect her moods.  I’ve learned to give her respect, and I’m grateful for her generosity in the times when I didn’t pay enough respect. It will not happen again.

      I clearly remember the first time I swam in Buzzards Bay, tasting the saltiness of the water, and the relative warmth compared to the water north of the Cape.  I was in awe then, and still am in many ways.  I’ve raised my own children to love the Bay and hope they’ll pay it forward for future generations.  I think she’ll be in good hands.

    • The Traveler’s Ditch Bag

      Sailors know of the ditch bag.  It’s a bag filled with essential items should the worst case scenario play out and you have to abandon ship.  Food, water, medicine, communication, maybe some fishing line and other assorted things that hopefully keep you alive long enough to be rescued.  All these things assembled at the ready – to be grabbed as you reluctantly jump into a life raft.

      I’m a land-based creature at the moment, but a traveler nonetheless.  I have a ditch bag of my own, usually kept in my work bag, but sometimes relocated to my duffel bag or suitcase, depending on the nature of travel.  But it’s always there at the ready, even now.  I came across it today as I was looking for the charger for my noise-cancelling headphones, and smiled at the ditch bag that silently waits for our next adventure.  I’m ready my friend, even if the world isn’t quite ready for us.  Flexible traveling requires keeping things to a minimum, but there are some things that must always be with you.

      My traveler’s ditch bag is filled with the important items that must be with you – charging cords and plug adapters for various countries, a mini power strip, an extra watch band, a second wallet with a couple of just-in-case credit cards that I rarely use, a headlamp, a couple of pens and a small notebook, earplugs, a couple of protein bars and some Motrin and Tums.  All that is typical.  Where I might go off the path a bit is in the other things I bring with me: A sky chart that glows in the dark for both northern and southern hemisphere, media adapters for plugging a laptop into a monitor or television, a bullet journal to keep tasks on track, those invaluable noise-cancelling headphones, reading glasses and a paperback book to read just in case the iPhone with Kindle app fails me.  The iPhone has helped immeasurably in minimizing stuff jammed into the travel ditch bag.  I used to bring 3-4 books to read, now I have everything on the kindle with that one physical book.  I also have an assortment of required apps at the ready: Duolingo, Google Translate, Pocket Universe, iTunes, Aurora, Ring, TripIt, Uber, Waze and of course, WordPress.

      Toiletry kit, laptop, passport and assorted work-related items go elsewhere.  Wear an outfit that would be appropriate attire should your bag get lost.  Always carry a water bottle, sunglasses and a baseball hat too.  Good walking shoes, sunscreen and a reversible belt and you can pull off just about anything.  And that’s my travel kit, packed and ready to go, waiting indefinitely…  like the rest of us.

    • Sea Change

      “The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.” – Jules Verne

      I’ve been to the desert, and I’ve been at sea. There’s magic in both places, but give me the ocean. But what of the trees? I write this listening to the trees that surround me alive in the wind, with life stirring on all sides. Surely there’s magic here too? True, but I’m too far inland to smell the ocean, and that just can’t stand forever. And what of mountains? Aren’t they also alive, singing their siren call in seductive whispers? Indeed, but the waters of the mountain yearn for the sea and so do I. My mind’s on the sea, for I’ve grown to be a salty dog and prefer the ocean swells to the shifting sands and even tree song and mountain whispers. The sea is alive on all sides, and it stirs life in me when I’m a part of it. And haunts me when I’m away. I’ll return again, as the mountain stream inevitably does, and will rejoice in the union.

    • Revisiting Belém Tower

      Perched on the Northern Shore at the Mouth of the Tagus River, Belém Tower is a time machine back to the Age of Discovery.  It was built while Ferdinand Magellan was still making the first circumnavigation of the globe, a high point on a string of maritime milestones for Portugal.  It was designed by Francisco de Arruda as a “permanent ship” to help defend Lisbon and the river, and features the Portuguese Manuelino style popular during the lifetime of King Manuel I.  That it stands largely as it was built 500 years later is a blessing.  Countless souls have walked through Belém Tower, from kings to prisoners to tourists from all over the world.  I’m lucky to have been one of those souls.  As travel remains a dream for the future, I thought I’d return once again.

      Belém Tower is an island dropped in the waters of the Tagas River. To visit it you purchase a ticket next door and go stand in line on the small pedestrian bridge that spans the lapping waters that swirl around the base of the tower underneath you and then splash up the stairs that circle the tower on shore.  Apparently the island was once further out in the river but an earthquake shifted the land and moved it closer to shore.  Better for tourism today, and it’s likely that the prisoners held in the lowest level didn’t really care about a 360 degree water view anyway.

      You enter into the bastion at the base and the arched ceilings grab your attention.  There are views of the magazine from when it was a fort, or where the prisoners were held when it was a prison.  As you climb, you visit the Governor’s Hall, the King’s Hall and the Audience Room.  I quickly learned that the staircases are very tight, and require you wait your turn to climb up or down in a controlled fashion.  I didn’t expect to be waiting at traffic lights in a building built half a millennium ago, but sure enough I did.  Great indication of just how many people visit, and how cramped those staircases are.  Like other spiral staircases built long ago, these were tight for this tall writer.  There just weren’t a lot of clydesdales walking around in 1520, something I’ve grown to accept as I duck my way through history.  The other thing you notice is the ornate gothic details adorning the building.  This was built as a fortress, but also for a king.  There are wonderful details throughout, and I did my best to take it all in.  Traveling solo, I was able to allocate as much time as I wanted for Belém Tower and managed to explore all parts of the structure open to the public.

      I fell in love with Portugal and wonder when I’ll get a chance to return again.  My visit to Belém Tower in January of 2018 capped off an incredible week in my life that marked a new beginning of sorts for me.  I visited before the tower’s birthday, before the pandemic, before a lot of things.  It would be interesting to return again someday to see Belém Tower with fresh perspective.  To feel the energy of Lisbon and the possibility that the Tagas River offered those who launched their own discoveries sailing right past the tower.  I was so busy looking back during my visit that I wasn’t fully aware of the future that Portugal helped launch for me.  My own age of discovery, if you will.  In many ways, it started right here.

      Inside the Bastion

       

    • Owning a Pool

      I dove into deep water Saturday, grateful for the pool heater and the money to pay for the luxury of it.  I’m pretty sure that if I had to do it all over again I’d never have invested in a pool. I’m not wealthy, but I might be if I didn’t have it.  And since I made the financial leap 13 years ago who am I to ignore it now?  A pool has a price that goes beyond the installation and maintenance costs.  It’s an anchor in your backyard that holds you just as firmly as a garden does.  When I installed the pool I had two young children and a highly active Labrador retriever (dog ear infections from swimming too much: yet another hidden cost).  The children are adults now, the retriever has finally escaped the fences of this world, and I’m still looking at a hole in the ground that doesn’t care whether I want it there anymore as long as I feed it money.

      To say I have a tenuous relationship with the pool is an understatement.  But we’ve recently resolved some of our differences.  It involved money, naturally.  If time is money, then I’ve given a lot of my lifetime to this pool, and I was feeling a bit resentful.  The last straw was the pool heater failing a year ago and the water never really warming up to acceptable levels for the masses.  And so it became an expensive water feature in the garden, with trees shading it just enough that it never really got comfortable, even on the hottest days.  And so this year we ponied up the cash and fixed the heat exchanger, dodging a $6000 replacement cost with an $800 repair.  How long it lasts is anyone’s guess, but the pool is warm enough for the fair weather fans.  And I danced the gleeful dance that only a pool owner can understand; I only spent $800 this time!

      Look, I know a large percentage of the population is unemployed and struggling to make ends meet.  I know that having a pool available when you’re under quarantine is surely a luxury, and don’t think for a minute that I’m not grateful for it now.  I’ve been unemployed with the pool and two kids to feed and know both sides of this story.  For the moment the pool and I are peacefully coexisting, and I’m grateful for the good fortune.  With the kids home all summer, the pool may be used more than it has been in years.  But I see the pool liner fading, and the cracks in the stamped concrete, and the louder hum the pump is making, and I know that this toll road continues indefinitely.  A pool is a lot like a boat in this way, but without the travel.  If there was ever a year to have it, it’s 2020.  And so I’ll continue to throw money in the hole and hope for some measure of return on my investment.  That ROI is measured in laps, and I have my work cut out for me to make it worthwhile.  Better jump in again…

    • Not an Anchor but a Mast

      “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.” – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

      “Restless in rest” sums up my weekends, and my time on Buzzards Bay, and sailing, and in the garden and in the house… and in stillness. I need to keep moving and doing things. I’m not much of a meditator. I calm the mind through doing things. Meditate? Do the dishes! Weed the garden! Paint something!  Trim the hedges!  That’s my meditation. Rest is not in my DNA.  Even at my desk I had to put in a sit/stand adapter because I can’t sit still all day.  I guess that makes me a child of space, like a worker bee.  Worker bees don’t sit still. They fly far away, find and collect beautiful bounty, and return it to the nest.  They simply… work. And so must I.

      This concept of your house as a mast mesmerized me, for uh, verily, I’ve long thought of it as an anchor.  In normal times my career takes me to faraway places to busily go about my work and then to return home to the nest with whatever I earned along the way.  Home was an anchor that held me to a certain place, the opposite of a mast.  Wandering souls need masts and disdain anchors, like a dog tied to a tree gnaws at the rope. But don’t we need both?  A place to ground us and fair winds to fly before?

      Every night I lie down in bed with a Groundhog Day feeling.  That feeling of doing the exact same thing that you did the night before and the night before that.  That’s what staying home does to me.  And yet every day is different, full of progression and setbacks and new discoveries and familiar faces seen in a new way.  And I wake in the morning and set the sails and find new ways to move forward.  Shunning comfort.  To be hungrier.  To run lean and with an eye to the horizon.  But you’ve got to weigh anchor before you set the sails, even if it’s only in your mind.

    • Catching a Scent of Kiwi

      A flash of memory and I was suddenly on a 28 foot Islander motoring into the mouth of the Merrimack River late in the night after a long, wonderful evening ’round Isle o Shoals, music playing loud and rum flowing freely. We were lucky that night, reckless as we were, but all highly focused when it counted.  And entering the treacherous mouth in the dark is one of those times when it counted.  The entire night is a shared conspiracy between the three of us, and the stories usually come out with the rum.

      That sailboat was full of challenges and maintenance issues and most of all an unplaceable odd smell we just couldn’t get rid of. The smell was the deal breaker, and we finally sold her to an eager gentleman with resolve to bring her back. I recognized that resolve, but that boat broke me just as it probably broke him. I hope not though – I’d like to think that she got a complete facelift and is defiantly darting across the waves as she once did.  She was a great sailor, that Islander.  She had a great name too: Kiwi.  But her body odor was just too…  off-putting.

      Like a bad relationship you can’t get past, I’d like to sail again, but I’m scarred by the first one.  I know the cost of a big boat. Money is one thing, but time is another. There’s nothing wrong with spending either if you’re all in, but I’m not all in. Not now anyway.  And so I crew on other boats in normal times.  And I sail on small boats when the opportunities come up.  And I scheme and plan for ways to get back on the water again.  And follow the adventure of others who do.  When the respiratory vapor settles on this pandemic I’m picking up a small boat to sail around the bay.  One small way to stay in the game.  I know the logistics of that aren’t small either, but nothing meaningful is easy.  And sailing is meaningful.