Archives for category: Travel
« Older Entries

“This probably isn’t good.”

September 13, 2024 //
0

The area where I’m staying does not endear itself to me. Today I had need of a laundromat: without a private bathroom and a supply of towels my ability to do hand laundry does not exist.

Because there was no one on desk duty at 9:30 in the morning, I followed instructions and phoned someone on the house phone, asking where I could find a laundromat. To me, a laundromat means a place with coin-operated washing machines and dryers and boxes of detergent where you do your own laundry. I had packed all of my dirty laundry into my day pack in a plastic bag and needed to know where to take it.

The guy I spoke to gave me directions. “Go right. Go right again…”

“Could you just tell me the name of the street?”

He told me it was on Brighton Ave. I walked Brighton Ave in both directions. No laundromat.

I turned the corner onto Harvard Ave where I had seen a place where you take your laundry to be washed. You were supposed to have a minimum of ten pounds.

My laundry, including my dirty lavender day pack, came to nine pounds. Ten pounds gets you a rate of $1.50 per pound. I didn’t care. I needed clean clothes so I paid fifteen dollars and watched the proprietor dump my laundry out onto the floor in front of a washing machine. Um. She also refused to wash my day pack (I throw it into the laundry regularly).

I have to be back at 5 PM to collect my clothes and I hadn’t yet had any breakfast, so I crossed the street to a convenience store, renewed my cash supply and bought a quart of milk to eat with some granola I took from our kitchen in Ireland.

I walked back to my lodgings. I was just going to eat sitting on the front steps: I had granola and milk and a spork. Ding, ding, ding — i didn’t have a bowl, mug, glass or anything to eat out of.

I went back inside. I asked the desk man on duty if he could find me a bowl or mug. I held up the milk jug and said “I have cereal, but nothing to eat it in.”

He offered me a plastic cup, saying “This probably isn’t good” and volunteered to go looking for something. Ten minutes later he came back with a dusty pot: “This is all I could find. You probably need to wash it. It’s been sitting around upstairs.”

“Could I have the plastic cup, please?” I asked. He went and got it again.

“Sorry to trouble you,” I said. “I have a whole kitchen without a plate, bowl, or cup.”

“We used to have all that stuff,” he said. “People would steal them, or not wash them.”

I sat down at my wooden kitchen table for five and poured half my granola into my new cup, adding a splash of whole milk. I ate it with my trusty travel spork, and rinsed it twice with water, which I drank, zen-style. I still had to clear out small seeds with my fingernail and use one of my precious tissues to wipe out the cup.

I put the milk in the refrigerator along with the rest of the granola. If the milk survives the night I’ll have granola tomorrow. The kitchen is adjacent to my room and is just for my own use behind a locked and chained door. It’s hard to go wild in a kitchen with only a refrigerator, a sink and empty cupboards.

I had a nice day yesterday, sketching and spending time in the Boston Public Garden, walking around and going to hear live music at Club Passim. I might write about all that later.

Tags , ,
Categories Travel

Boston: “Don’t Be Too Greedy.”

September 11, 2024 //
2

I have never been to Boston before. When I found myself in Shannon Airport in Ireland on Monday morning unable to book a flight to California I decided to go to Boston. I relied on Booking.com to find affordable lodging and chose a place called The Farrington Inn. In the photos it looked like a nice house that had been converted to lodging. It was near a T stop, which meant I could get there. The booking mentioned a shared bathroom and I pictured a bathroom between a couple of rooms, accessible from either.

I am learning that not having a smart phone is a significant deficit. Even cities with a lot of tourism have largely abandoned paper maps for their transit systems, neighborhoods and local attractions. There were subway maps inside the stations, but I didn’t see a single map I could take away with me. I did find a red-shirted transit worker whose shirt said “Ask me a question.”

“Is it really alright to ask you a question?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. When I asked him what T stop I needed for the Farrington Inn he pulled out his smart phone to answer the question. He mentioned getting on the purple line, but I had been staring at a map that indicated that Green Line B might be the right direction. “Or you could take the Red Line to Park and transfer to the Green Line B. Get off at Harvard Ave.”

“Green Line B to Harvard,” I repeated.

I took a Red Line train going toward Alewife (great name!) and got off at Park. Someone told me how to cross through the train by entering it from one platform and exiting through the opposite door onto the other in order to get the elevator to the ticket machines.

With some trouble I bought a “Charlie card,” a 7-day transit pass named for the unfortunate man who was short a nickel and could not get off the MTA. Another red-shirted transit worker helped me get through the fare gate and I was off on a crowded Green Line B train (A tall woman kindly stood and gave me her seat: I squished in my soft-sided travel backpack and held my day pack on my lap, watching the display and listening for station stops).

We traveled underground for awhile and then came above ground to see buildings, trees, sky. We passed Boston University, not to be confused with Boston College, the end of the line. I could see that there was a transit legend further down the car, but I could not read it from where I was sitting. After many stops I heard “Harvard” and staggered off the train, having no idea where I was going. The street was filled with ubiquitous American chains, including McDonald’s and 7-11.

I tried McDonald’s first, but could not figure out how to talk to a human there, so I crossed the street and asked in 7-11 if they had a street map. “We don’t have street maps,” the clerk said. “CVS has street maps.”

Back out I went and scanned the horizon for CVS. I saw it. I crossed the street again twice and asked a CVS clerk if they had street maps. She went off to look, but came back.

“We don’t have street maps,” she said.

Adjacent to CVS was Dunkin’ Donuts, Boston’s iconic coffee chain. I popped in, studied the menu, ordered a lemonade and took it to a small table. I unpacked my laptop to take advantage of free WiFi and looked up directions to the Farrington Inn. It said to turn right onto Harvard Ave, cross three intersections and turn right onto Farrington Ave.

I struggled to identify Harvard Ave: the street signs were confusing. The T called its stop Harvard Ave, but had really stopped on Commonwealth near Harvard. Turns out Harvard Ave was the first corner I had come to, anchored by the McDonald’s and the 7-11.

I trudged down the street, noting a bakery for future reference and a mailbox. I crossed what I thought were three intersections, but still had not come to Farrington Avenue. All along the way I stopped people and asked directions. No one knew anything until I asked a young man “Do you live in this neighborhood?”

“I used to,” he said.

“Do you know Farrington Avenue?”

“Are you looking for The Farrington Inn?”

It was one intersection further. I turned right and looked for number 23 with its double red doors. They were up a steep flight of steps. The first step was a doozy, twice as high as the others. I had to haul myself up by the newel post and the railing, setting my day pack down on each next step. An elderly gentleman watched from the porch and offered me help.

A red door opened and a man asked if I were a guest.

“I have a reservation for six nights,” I said.

“Let me get this gentleman settled. Wait for me in the room on the right.”

I sank onto a sofa with my big pack.

When he came back, he asked if I would prefer a room on the ground floor or a room near the bathroom. which might be on the third floor.

“You seem to have trouble walking,” he said.

“I don’t have trouble walking when I haven’t been carrying a heavy pack. I walked here from the T.”

“You walked here from the T? Wow. Let me look at my inventory.”

He showed me to a ground floor room. The first door led to a kitchen: sink, cupboards, small refrigerator, table and five chairs. No stove, oven, hot plate or microwave. From there, another door led to a bedroom: bed, desk, chair, bureau, small “bedside table” at the foot of the bed. T.V. on the wall, air conditioner fitted into one of four tall narrow windows.

He switched the air conditioner on.

“Do you want to see the bathroom?”

He led me down another corridor and said “It’s the white-painted door.”

“Do you mind if I look?” I asked.

I opened the door. There was a marblesque counter, a scarred sink, and a tiled shower over a bathtub, the kind with doors in a metal track. Sigh. No claw foot bathtub.

“Do you have any questions?”

“No,” I chirped, eager to rest.

Five minutes later, I realized there were no towels in my room.

I went back to reception. “Do you supply towels?”

“Aren’t there any in your room?”

He handed me a folded white bath towel. No hand towel. No bath mat. No face cloth. “Don’t be too greedy,” he said. “They only let us have three of them.”

I didn’t even try to figure that out.

Tags , , ,
Categories Travel, Uncategorized

Further adventures at The Craiglands, Yorkshire

August 26, 2024 //
3

On this, my first visit to Yorkshire, I am staying at The Craiglands Hotel. I have been here seven nights so far.

The room is comfortable and the spacious bathroom has a deep tub and a heated towel rack. I make use of these amenities nearly everyday. The staff are friendly and helpful.

On Saturday as I was leaving the hotel to walk to town for a belated breakfast I saw a wedding party arriving, a red carpet laid on the front steps, people milling about. I spent the day in town, sketching and walking about, bought a picnic lunch to eat later and planned an evening rendezvous with my friend D. for a singing session on Zoom.

Saturday evening just as I had finished my in-room picnic and lay down for a rest, I heard music thumping through the floor. At first I thought it was another guest listening to music in his room, but the sound was too loud and persistent for that. As the bass and drums continued to pound and rattle I remembered the wedding party and went down to the front desk to ask how long the music would continue.

“Until midnight,” the desk clerk told me.

Midnight! It was 7 PM.

He offered to look for another room for me and he did but there was nothing available, the remaining rooms having been assigned to guests who had not yet checked in for the evening.

Back in my throbbing room, I emailed D. to ask if he could come collect me earlier, explaining the situation. He responded by asking if I needed to bring a toothbrush and said he and H. could put me up on the sofa if necessary.

I stayed at D. and H.’s until quarter after midnight, at which time he took me back to The Craiglands. The front door was wide open, and the lights were blazing, but it was blissfully quiet. I bathed and crawled into bed in my silent room.

The next morning when I went to the customary room for breakfast it was empty: no food on the steam tables, no sign of anyone else. I padded back to the front desk and asked about breakfast, which is included in the price of a stay.

“It’s down the far end,” I was told. I walked all of the way to the end of the hall and entered a ballroom. There was food alright, but there was no silverware on any table and the coffee urn was empty. I trudged out again to find a staff person whom I told about the lack of flatware and coffee. She supplied both for me — as I said, the staff are generally helpful.

As I exited the hotel after breakfast I saw another large party arriving, dressed to the nines in embroidered saris and formal clothes. “This looks like another wedding,” I thought to myself, dodging around the large, expensive vehicles idling in front of The Craiglands and going off to visit the Toy Museum, which is full of old dollhouses, teddy bears, train sets and a mechanized carnival.

Upon my return I found a message marked “urgent” from D. I feared a Covid outbreak, but the problem was that his computer was down. Since my phone does not work in the UK, D. and I communicate via email and Zoom, just as we do when I am at home in the States. He had borrowed H’s computer to send me a message.

I replied that he was welcome to use my laptop and asked him to collect me earlier than we had planned. I was able to help him access his email remotely and to strategize about what to do before he could have his computer looked at. Then I settled down to doing my laundry and having Sunday dinner with my friends.

I returned to the Craiglands at about 9 PM. The red carpet outside was strewn with the remains of flower petals and, once again, the hotel was quiet. I hung damp laundry on every surface that would bear it before I went to bed.

This morning, the lights were out in the corridor outside my room. Okay. The lights work in my room and in the other corridors. Breakfast was once again served in the ballroom. I prefer the more intimate breakfast room usually in use so I did not stay long and returned to my room to make tea.

Tonight is my last night here before I depart for Bournemouth on Tuesday to visit a student. Who knows what will happen tonight and tomorrow morning?

Tags , , ,
Categories Travel

Welcome to Ilkley, Yorkshire

August 20, 2024 //
2

After countless hours in the Dublin airport, a fiendishly long layover during which I wrote, sketched, drank a cappuccino to remain awake after a near sleepless night on a red-eye from Los Angeles, and tried many times to sleep sitting in a chair, but ended up meditating instead, I ended up at a crowded gate at 4:00 in the morning, got on a bus and boarded a small plane, the kind where you walk across the tarmac and climb a narrow ladder, two seats on either side of the aisle. The flight was advertised with a meal, but to get one you would have had to pay for it, so I didn’t have breakfast on the plane.

What I noticed as we approached Leeds/Bradford airport was how green everything was, fields and trees everywhere greener than in eastern Ireland. The airport is tiny. Someone waved me through customs and I went back to see if I needed my passport stamped. Someone said they often don’t stamp them if you enter from Ireland. That means there is no official record that I am here in England.

My friend D. had told me to get a bus to Otley, Yorkshire and, after two errors, I found the right one. The bus had WiFi so I was able to log on and tell D. I was on my way to Otley. I had assured him that most bus stations had a nearby cab rank and that I would get a cab from Otley to his house. Well, most American bus stations have a cab rank…

When I inquired about a cab and said I was going to Ilkley, a bus driver said “There’s a bus to Ilkley, but it just left.”

Of course it did. The buses were 28 minutes apart so I found a place to wait. It was a dry, overcast morning, but someone had done their best to imitate rain by flooding hanging baskets of flowers which were raining on the pavement.

When the bus pulled up, I asked the driver if he was going to Ilkley. He repeated “Ilkley” in an accent that implied I hadn’t got the name quite right, a dark, swallowed sound. Because I had no idea how long it would take to reach Ilkley I did not use the free WiFi on the coach but watched out the window and watched the monitor showing the stops.

I was tempted to get off in the village of Burley when one stop featured a brick square and a map, but I stayed on the bus until it terminated at Ilkley Station. I saw a post office with a bench in front and made for it. I meant to call D. to come get me, but my phone said “No service.” I paid for international roaming, but my phone had not worked in the Dublin airport, nor did it work in Ilkley.

I dug out my laptop and tried to join the local free network. The internet hamsters ran about on their wheel as fast as they could but I never got on. Okay, plan B: get some breakfast.

I looked across the street and saw a bakery, Loafers Bakery. Perfect. I studied the unfamiliar menu and then told the counter person I had not yet eaten breakfast and asked what she recommended. She suggested a bacon and egg or an egg and sausage sandwich. I chose the latter and asked for a cup of tea.

“Sugar?” she asked

“Sugar and milk, please.”

I was running on fumes as I crossed the street and sat on a wall to unwrap my sandwich. To my horror, it contained a sausage patty as thick as a hockey puck and a fried egg with a runny yolk on flavorless white bread. I nibbled the thin white edges of the egg, careful to avoid anything yellow, took one bite of sausage and went for the tea. This was, undoubtedly, the worst cup of tea I have ever had: weak, not sweet. The only thing it had going for it was that it was hot. I drank all of it.

Wondering what I was going to do next, I looked around and saw a cab leaving: there was a cab rank in the street in front of the post office. Stowing my uneaten sandwich in my day pack, I went to stand by the sign painted on the road.

When I gave the cabbie D’s address he knew right where it was and took me up the road for five pounds. As we turned into D’s street I saw a woman who could only be D’s. wife H., whom I had glimpsed all of once in a Zoom background. She was going out to look for me.

D. and H. helped me into the house, put on a kettle for tea and showed me into their lounge or sitting room. H. placed a plate of homemade shortbread within easy reach and had me choose a china mug for tea. Good, strong Yorkshire tea. D. was full of apologies, but I assured him I had enjoyed taking the buses and watching the “shower” at Otley Bus Station. I told him that travel was all about adapting on the fly. I had found my way to him, hadn’t I? When I told them about the dreadful sandwich and tea H. said, “They’ve been there for years. I don’t know how they stay in business.”

D and H. kindly allowed me to nap on their settee. I woke just before 4 PM. We loaded my gear into D.’s car and he dropped me at the front entrance to my hotel. After wandering a maze of corridors and struggling with my key card (I had not stopped to read the instructions), I opened the door to a spacious room with a large bathroom.

Tired as I was, I unpacked all of my clothes, hanging most in the closet and folding the others onto shelves with the laundry bag isolated on the top shelf. I then did computer yoga, typing with my right hand while using my left to hold my Apple charger in the socket of the adapter in a wall plug (The weight of the Apple charger pulls it away from the adapter socket). I got to 85% battery capacity before it was time to teach a writing class on Zoom from the comfort of the big, soft bed — two and a half days later, I still owe my students their class summary — they’ll get it eventually….

Tags , , ,
Categories Travel

I’m on My Way

August 17, 2024 //
8

Today is truly my last day of residence in California unless the future holds something I don’t know about (certainly possible). I was born here and have lived here for most of my life with time off for a junior year in Ireland and grad school in North Carolina. As I took BART to the San Francisco Airport this morning we passed stops near where I used to live (24th St = Guerrero St), where a past love lives (Glen Park), where I went to therapy (Glen Park). As I rode the train, memories washed over me.

There was blue sky this morning as well as fog rolling over the hills: I could see both from the window.

I spent last night at a friend’s house on Eighth St. in Berkeley. D has a lovely house with hardwood floors, a deep bathtub, octagonal floor tiles, a friendly dog who was surprised to have a visitor. I slept on a loveseat and then on a couch when I wanted to stretch my legs.

D is a fine hostess, Midwestern style. She went out and bought a new set of sheets for me to sleep on, if only for one night, and broke out some new towels in the bargain. She fed me coffee and oatmeal this morning (She had offered a trip to Lavender Bakery for pastries, but when I am traveling I like to start with healthy food, knowing that I will end up grabbing pick-up meals and eating crap sooner or later).

I lucked out at SFO though. My gate was close to Drake’s Brewing Co. I read the menu, which featured both Caesar salad and pizza, two of my favorite things. Which to get? I ordered pepperoni and chile pizza and asked for a side salad, which was a Caesar. Yes! Everything was delicious and I saved enough pizza for my next meal. It wasn’t crowded and there was plenty of space for my bags and cane at my feet.

I don’t usually travel with a cane. I have cerebral palsy and mostly walk unassisted, but I brought a cane in case my six weeks of travels include any challenging walks or hikes — I am going several places I have never been before. The cane also helps to balance extra luggage: I tried to travel light and got rid of everything I reasonably could, but I travel with a large backpack and a small day pack and there is no great way to carry that combination since you can’t put both of them your back (my preferred mode of portage). Before I left D’s this morning I jettisoned a couple pounds of coffee beans, filters, a coffee grinder, a jar of honey, a singleton sock and a Leonard Cohen T-shirt. I love Leonard, but I don’t need souvenirs on this trip.

I’m spending my last resident hours in California at LAX waiting for my flight to Dublin, Ireland. From thence I go to Leeds on Monday morning. My afternoon has been filled with jitney rides, currency exchanges and gate changes, plus online chatting with my good friend Neola, one of my biggest supports through the past year.

I am doing my best to put myself on Irish/British time: because it is now the middle of the night in those countries I will try to put myself to sleep as soon as I board the plane. I have ear plugs and a sleep mask, which should help. It will be mask on mask since the lower part of my face is masked against Covid and the upper will be masked against light. I should probably have someone take a photo of this unusual sight since I will look like some kind of alien, or maybe Bug Rogers.

The gate is getting really crowded and the hallway, too, with the most people I have seen all day. Almost no one is wearing a mask — I estimate 1-2%, which makes me more determined to keep mine on. I had a barrier of empty disabled seats for awhile, but now I am seated next to a small child and an Irish woman with a cane. Who is from Limerick, where I am going in two and a half weeks. Small world.

Tags , ,
Categories Travel

The Monte Rio Diaries, Part Two

August 15, 2024 //
0

My friend S. is a late riser. I live a whole life before she gets up in the morning. I check email. I charge up a computer and a phone. I re-pack my luggage. I make coffee. I say hello to S’s husband G. who gets up even earlier than I do.

This morning I found a bowl of Bosc pears on the kitchen counter. That was the signal to make a baked pear pancake: after preheating a 425 F oven I sliced pears and caramelized them in a cast iron skillet with sugar and butter. While they were cooking I made a batter of flour, melted butter, eggs, milk, vanilla and raw sugar. I poured the batter over the fruit and popped it in the oven for twenty-five minutes. Voila.

After eating I went out to sketch. I’m supposedly taking a sketching class on Zoom, but I tried for twenty minutes to get in. No dice. I had assembled my sketching materials, filled my watercolor pen, sharpened some aquarelles, so I opened my sketchbook and began to sketch the bonsai tree out on the deck. I hate bonsai and feel sorry for them, so I made it a real, non-stunted tree and started filling in the colors and shapes of the trees in the landscape behind it. I used too much water trying to make the colors blend — I tore the bottom of the paper and my pigment bled through onto the next page or so. I left the sketchbook outside to dry and rinsed my brushes in the sink, checked email again and sat down to write. S. is still sound asleep.

I am getting used to S.’s kitchen: the rack of cast iron pans hanging above the stove, the baking sheets stashed next to the piano, the refrigerator door that requires slamming to stay shut. But sometimes I find the unexpected.

After lunch on Monday I was craving a sweet. I asked Sadie what she had. She offered me a chocolate bar and mentioned baking mixes. Nah. I had brought a container of rolled oats from the house I left in July. “I could make cookies,” I said. “I brought oatmeal. Do you have flour?” I knew there was butter and I had sugar.

“I have flour. I have eggs. Do you know where everything is?”

“I think so. I took a tour when you-all weren’t around.”

I found the flour in a low cupboard with other baking supplies and packages of pasta. While I was looking for it, I found a jar of bright white powder. I read the label pasted on the jar lid: “Powdered sugar, pretty much ant-free.” I laughed out loud and have been telling the story ever since.

S. got up. I procured a basket and picked blackberries in the garden. She was having breakfast when I got back. When I got hungry I made a peanut butter and blackberry sandwich: ripe blackberries — nature’s jam.

I had a second one of those the next day for lunch before we went to the river to swim. I swam. S. waded into the water a few times and sat on a towel reading. It was lovely: hot day, cool water, negligible current. The water is lower than I have ever seen it at the river, but I have only been here half a dozen times in my life. I would come back. There are hotels here and everything as well as S’s inimitable hospitality.

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories baking, breakfast food, cookies, Travel

The Monte Rio Diaries, Part One

August 12, 2024 //
0

I am up in Monte Rio, California, one of the towns on the Russian River in Sonoma County, lesser known than its counterpart Guerneville. My friend S. lives there with her husband G. in a ramshackle house by the side of the road right above the river. I love it up here in the redwood forest, although I love it best when the sun is out and we can swim in the river or kayak.

I arrived here on Friday evening after 6 PM. My friend Lorelei, like me, loves to be surrounded by water and trees and jumped at the chance to drive me up to my friend’s house. We arrived with my travel backpack, my day pack and a couple of boxes of food I have been hauling around since I left my former home in Kensington. Lorelei snapped a few nice photos of me out on S’s deck. I call the one above “Sharyn and the Paycock.”

S. had spent the day clearing a space for me to sleep and making up a bed for me. I am sleeping on another high bed under a window with another window behind me: when it is dark I can see a spray of stars. There is enough room for my travel gear and a wide ledge for a lamp, my laptop, pens and my glasses. In daylight I look out into the trees and a purple buddleia growing up from the garden.

I have been down into the garden to sketch, to test out the almost-ripe blackberries and to sit in the sun. I drew the blackberries with watercolor pencils on watercolor paper and then saw a weathered white statue or mannequin leaning against the weathered white boards of the house. She was festooned with duct tape around her neck and speckled with mossy green. I had a postcard that I had painted over that had kind of a basket-weave pattern of gray and white, the perfect background to recreate the mannequin with leaves growing where her thighs ended.

Yesterday I asked S. if the mannequin had a name. She didn’t. “You can name her,” S. said.

“Penelope,” I said. It’s what came into my head because she looks like she has been waiting awhile down there in the garden.

S. and I have got up to no end of fun already. On Saturday we went out to a library sale where I replenished my supply of books. I had mailed a box of books off to my storage facility in Port Angeles on Friday before I left Martinez, but I can’t stand having nothing to read and books are cheap at library sales and they had such good books: I will be mailing off another box of books before I leave Monte Rio. For now I have the pleasure of reading essays by Ann Patchett.

After the library sale, S. suggested we go to a cafe. There I had a Mexican mocha and she had a latte and we sat and talked. When we got back to her house we rehearsed and performed at an online singing session and played a couple of games of Jotto.

Sunday we went to the Sonoma County Fair, but that is another story…

Tags , ,
Categories Travel

Nomadic Life, Episode Three

August 7, 2024 //
2

Dear Readers,

I have moved three times in the last month. I spent two nights at the home of Peg and Joe Healy in Albany, settling Onyx the cat into her temporary home. Then I moved to a twenty-day house-sit on Howe Street in Oakland. And last night I settled into a three-night stay with friends in Martinez.

D&D are very kind. D.J. came and picked me up at Howe Street, waited patiently while I loaded her car with my travel backpack, my day pack, two bags of food, one bin of food, assorted shoes and a box of tea. Despite reading about how to travel light, I am finding it more difficult than expected here in my home country — I am used to having kitchen items, a certain stock of food, more choices of clothing and I am not used to carrying around a bag of files from my filing cabinet. I’m currently carrying more books than I can carry overseas — I found it hard to give up the option of reading some things, although at Howe Street I read novels that L. had recommended and didn’t crack open any of my own books.

D&D provided me with towels and a laundry hamper, showed me the pantry and the electric kettle, told me to help myself to food for breakfast. I had to ask for a step-stool to get into bed because the bed is much higher than anything I’ve ever slept in (The Victorians had stools or ladders to get into their high beds). I found a plug for my laptop and, after ransacking my just-repacked luggage, found the charger and cord — I usually leave it in a specific location in a dedicated laptop bag, but I had stuffed it elsewhere in my day pack.

I still need to lighten my load before leaving the country. I will store my files here in Martinez, mail my books to myself at my temporary forwarding address and consider jettisoning at least one pair of shoes and some clothing. Despite the fact that I am carrying more weight and bulk than I want to, I find I want more things, not less: I want things that I do not have: after several weeks in my black and blue travel clothes I am sick of my “blue period” and long for purple, red and green.

Friday I go up to Monte Rio at the Russian River for at least one night and maybe more. After Friday night I have seven more nights to sleep somewhere before I get on a series of planes to Leeds, England. Rather than finding it exciting not knowing how long I will be anywhere, reveling in open-ended possibilities, I feel anxious, wishing things were nailed down.

“Nomadic life” is a kind phrase for the life I am living now. Technically, I am transient, without a permanent home base. Also, technically, I am unhoused or homeless, although I have a few friends who like to dispute this. “You’re not homeless,” one says, “You’re buying a house.”

Not now I’m not: there is no money for a house until the family home sells and I am not in charge of the sale myself.

Another friend, a good friend, says “Homeless people don’t go to Europe.” Yes, in fact, some of them do — we have to go somewhere — and I had paid for three of these trips and most of a fourth before the latest round of trouble and financial stress started. “Homeless people” aren’t all the same. Some of them look just like you. They used to have money, secure places to live. A lot of us work — you don’t necessarily become homeless because you don’t work, can’t work, or refuse to work: I have worked for pay through the entire transition of my mother’s illness and death, sorting through her belongings, packing up my belongings for moving and storage and bouncing around from house to house. I happen to own my own business. One of my friends who is also unhoused survives by pet-sitting. Please check your assumptions about what it means to be homeless unless you are living that life yourself.

As 12-step programs like to remind people, right now I am okay. I had a bed to sleep in last night and breakfast food this morning. I am currently in a house where I can use the WiFi, take a shower, do the laundry. And I will have all of those things for two more nights. I have a place to go for the third night and, after that, I need to have conversations, make arrangements, find or pay for further temporary lodging.

Tags , ,
Categories Travel, Uncategorized

The Howe Street Diaries, Part Two

July 31, 2024 //
0

July 31, 2024

I am in my last week on Howe Street. I have finished the first of the two novels L. lent me to read and am working my way through History of the Rain, slowly because the Paris Olympics are on and I spend late nights and early mornings watching gymnastics on my laptop.

I have checked out the closest pizza place and the Chinese takeout joint, had breakfast with a friend at Mama’s Royal Cafe and dinner with another at Teni East Kitchen. Dinner out or takeout provide me with food for at least another meal.

A breakfast out is an exception though: morning usually finds me feeding cats, grinding coffee beans and cooking something for breakfast: today it was an egg and two slices of sesame bread with honey. My leftover Chinese lunch is heating in the oven (brown rice, string beans and spicy eggplant).

I am becoming adept at bathtub laundry, tossing like-colored clothes in with me when I bathe or wash my hair, leaving them to soak for awhile, wringing the water out and carrying them to the drying rack on the front porch. The secret is to do laundry every few days so that I do not have more than I can hang out. We are having typical Bay Area summer weather with cool, overcast mornings and warmer afternoons.

Yesterday I took the afternoon off from a vexing situation. My friend J. spirited me off to Tilden Park in her little red car. We rode the Merry-Go-Round (my choice) and the Steam Train (hers) and capped our day off with ice cream at iScream on Solano Ave. I had a coffee malt (no dinner necessary) and J. ate chocolate and blueberry ice creams.

Pandora, the chunky cat, stays close to me, almost always in the same room. Cassandra, the skinny one, remains aloof, although she did give me slow blinks from afar the other day. She is not ready to be friends.

It has been a lovely stay in a lovely neighborhood. The house is quiet and cool. My hosts sent me a postcard of Yeats from Ireland. I have a new favorite cafe and a couple of restaurants I like here, having found them just before I leave California. I still have some food to use up — sauerkraut and sausages, cheese, ramen noodles, frozen blueberries and maple syrup and more coffee than I can drink.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Travel, Uncategorized

The Howe Street Diaries, Part One

July 21, 2024 //
2

Dear Readers,

I am in the house-sitting, couch surfing phase of my travels before I take off for England on August 17, 2024, although I am still clearing items out of my childhood home in Kensington, CA. Today I began a diary of my house-sitting experiences in North Oakland.

The Howe Street Diaries

July 21, 2024

I am staying in the home of S&L, whom I met through a mutual friend. On Thursday July 18 they flew off to Ireland, leaving me in their beautiful house in North Oakland.

It is the kind of house I like, all wooden floors and windows, perched above the street with a front deck shaded by bottle brush and a backyard. In the last four days I have made a tour of comfortable sitting spots: the front porch chair where I ate lunch yesterday after a three-hour online sesshin with Natalie Goldberg, the living room couch where I sat for the sesshin and lay to read more of Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier, which L. lent me, reading about the adventures and inner states of two Irish middle-aged drug smugglers.

Now I sit at the kitchen table, plain plank, having eaten a bowl of Irish oats cooked in milk with salt, maple syrup and walnuts. To my right sits a cooling mug of coffee with cream (I must go out and hunt more half and half today at the Piedmont Grocery).

Late in my sixty-some year sojourn in California I discovered the pleasures of Straus half and half. It comes in a glass deposit bottle. It is far fresher and more flavorful than any other brand of half and half I have tasted. L&S left behind a partial bottle of Straus whole milk — I used the last of it to soak my Irish oats for breakfast.

Yesterday I had planned to make Irish oats for breakfast. I found a small saucepan in the rotating pot cupboard. What I could not find was a measuring cup. While I was searching for measuring cups I found a few slices of buttermilk bread tucked in a drawer. “I’d better use this,” I thought, and switched my breakfast plan to French toast.

I went on a hunt for vanilla extract, nutmeg or cinnamon. I found four bottles of orange blossom water. But S&L had left a few juice oranges on the table, so I made French toast batter from eggs and orange juice, fried the toast in butter and ate it with some frozen blueberries and maple syrup I brought from Kensington. I heated them in the small saucepan because there doesn’t seem to be a microwave: there is a mysterious black box on the kitchen counter to the right of the six burner gas stove, but I am not sure what it is and I am not sure how to open it.

S&L left me with two cats to care for. Pandora is neurologically challenged, fat, and friendly. Cassandra, her litter mate, can leap from the top of the high platform bed to the floor. She startled me the other morning by doing just that. She seems afraid of me: I have to put her food down and back away. They are both black cats. Pandora has soft fur; Cassandra is a touch-me-not.

The end of the afternoon finds me sitting on the living room couch again writing to my constant readers. Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for further adventures and an August guest post on https://thekitchensgarden.com

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Travel, Uncategorized
« Older Entries