Tag: travel

The Flats of Vermont

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There are bigger dog shows. There are fancier venues. There are shows with media hoopla and some dog world prestige. But the Vermont Scenic Circuit, dog shows held on the Tunbridge Worlds Fairgrounds in mid-July each year is still my favorite dog show.

You’ll be parking on grass, and walking a lot. It might get dusty. There’s no mobile phone coverage on the way in and out of the show, so make sure you’ve got your navigon programmed in advance.

It’s a bit of a drive to get there, so I loaded up the car with both dogs, flat buckle collars and six-foot leashes, dog food and treats, packable kennels, and some changes of clothes for me. On the way, I stopped for a grinder in Connecticut and tried to visit a fabric thrift store in Massachusetts, but they weren’t open.

Last year, I was unimpressed by the desolate lodgings I booked online, so this year when I found a gorgeous, dog-welcoming, old-school bed and breakfast called Hubble Shire Farm in Chelsea, Vermont, I snapped up a room. The innkeeper, above left, is an Australian shepherd named Tristan, who welcomes well-mannered people and dogs to this exquisitely decorated gem of an inn, and is, of course, supported by capable, hospitable human staff who will take your reservation on the phone or by email. And make breakfast and dinner.

There was another person, Doug, staying at the bed and breakfast, and he, too, was there for the dog show; we had most of our meals together. The food was expertly prepared, featuring seasonal dishes. I didn’t have wine but the inn has a full liquor license and some very nice wines were consumed. What fun to make new friends.

After my too lovely breakfast the first morning, I loaded the dogs in the white whale and started it up and got an ugly warning on the dash: one tire was low. I hopped out and looked and, in fact, that tire was almost completely flat. I called AAA. While I waited, I unstrapped the dog crates, took out one dog, removed the first crate, put the dog back in the crate, took out the other dog, took out the other crate, and put the dog in his crate. It had started to rain.

The spare tire in the white whale is stored outside, under the way-back of the car, but the cable that keeps it in place is loosened by a wrench that is stored in a compartment under the floor in the way-back, with the jack. The guy dispatched by AAA pulled up, unpacked the tools, and got to work lowering the spare onto the road. Soon enough he had the flat tire off, the spare on, and the bad tire loaded into my car, the tools re-stowed, and the compartments closed up again. I wiped down the wet kennels, removed one dog at a time, lifted the crates back in, replaced the dogs, strapped the crates back into place, and headed to the show.

When we arrived at the dog show, I checked in with the woman who tells everyone where to park, and she offered me one of the shadier spots on the property. I grabbed Eggi, left Fellow in his crate with a fan on, and walked and ran and walked and ran across the show grounds to the obedience ring to see if we had missed her class. We were just in time. The ring stewards asked me to take some deep breaths (which was impossible), told the slightly irate person who thought she was going in the ring next that she wasn’t going in next, and sent us in the ring instead. We weren’t great. But we managed to get a qualifying score so we were invited to return for the group sits and downs.

Now we had to wait for the rest of the class to go, including the sulky person we’d cut in front of, and the adrenaline that had carried us to this point had been used up and would take us no further. When it was time for the group sits and downs, we were lined up in catalog order, next to the first dog in, and though Eggi sat as asked, she spent the 60 seconds rolling her eyes around and looking every which way except at me, and when the judge said, “Back to your dogs,” she jumped defiantly to her feet, which was our moment of disqualification. It was a strange relief to be excused.

When we went outside, Eggi pooped immediately, which certainly explained why she couldn’t sit.

After a bit, it was Fellow’s turn, and even after he got his potty-business taken care of, he still seemed like he was on the verge of explosion. After a day of travel, a night in a new place with a genuine dog innkeeper, a flat tire, and a whole dog show to walk through, a Fellow was pretty fired up. I felt like he might jump out of the ring to greet a ring steward, or pee on the jump pile, or leap up and lick me in the face. But he stayed with me, and must have seemed obedient enough, despite barking twice, because in the end he had a 191/200 and won the beginner novice class.

Dog with a first place obedience ribbon on his crate is busy drinking water from a bucket

We went and found our friends‘ RV: Eggi and Fellow’s show handler T and her whole entourage. Nothing like having someone to show off your blue ribbon to! Fellow was rowdy and riled up, jumping all over me and barking and not letting me talk and looking like I’d stolen the ribbon from someone whose dog was not the embodiment of disobedience.

After that, I put Fellow away and went to watch my new friend Doug showing his dog in the groups. He has a rare breed, an Azawakh, named Ksenia. This breed, a West African sight hound, was new to the AKC hound group in 2019, so as a spectator, it is fun to watch the dog and the look of excited recognition on judges’ faces. Oh, they seem to be thinking, here’s one of these leggy and lean dogs that fits into a rectangle…what else do I remember? Ksenia is an exceptional example of the breed, of course, and through the weekend a number of people approached Doug to ask about her or to say that she was as nice an Azawakh as they’d ever seen. Of course, she is absolutely the nicest Azawakh that I’ve ever seen, and she carries herself with the polite, delicate, serene aloofness of a desert queen.

Doug came all the way from south Florida to do this show, and Ksenia had never been shown outdoors on grass before. The first day she seemed to think maybe Doug was confused about the grass and they were having a very strange potty walk. But every trip they took around the ring she got a little more relaxed and comfortable with it.

The next day, I woke up with a headache, so I tossed back a migraine pill with that deluxe breakfast on fine china. After walking my dogs, I loaded them in the white whale and drove up to Barre to see if I could get my tire repaired so we wouldn’t have to drive back home to Bedhead Hills on a janky-looking spare. It was another beautiful day, and the innkeeper’s human staff warned me that the way to Barre had potholes, so when the navigon sent me up a road called “Washington Turnpike” that felt suspiciously like a well-maintained dirt road I didn’t give it much thought until it narrowed and began to get winding and uphill. Then there was an entire loose herd of cows on the road and my state of anxiety in firm command and a quiet voice in my head saying well I could get a picture or even turn around. But, no. Onward.

In Barre, they patched my tire and did not return the spare to the storage underneath, but it was only $40 and they were very nice and I was so much happier driving back to the dog show with four proper tires again.

Arriving later at the dog show, there was no primo shady parking spot for me, but it was ok; I joined all the other late arrivals in the big grassy field to the south of the main action. I’d missed Eggi’s class but was in time for Fellow’s. The thing about migraine meds, though, is they sometimes take away my keener attention to detail, so when I left Fellow sitting and staying in the center of the ring to perform the walk-around, which is meant to be a neat, brisk rectangular walk ending with returning to my dog, what I did was a brisk perambulation of roughly 400° so that when I did recognize my over-rambling ways and return to my dog, he exploded with relief. It was my error and the judge informed me as much. So no qualifying score for us that day, which was just was well, because it was just for practice anyway. I thanked the judge, told Fellow he was a good boy, and went to find the group rings to watch Doug and his grand champion Azawakh.

We were in time to watch the terrier group, and to remember why we come to Vermont to show dogs in July: for the blue sky and green grass and pleasant breezes. There’s almost no place to stay nearby, so most of the professional handlers come and camp on the fairgrounds in their RVs, and everyone brings a chair over to watch groups, and no one rushes off for a dinner reservation. Every single day at this show feels like a party. Many days include ice cream.

And when I got back to the white whale, the tire that I’d paid $40 to repair was dramatically flat again. So I called Doug and he came back for me and my animals, because AAA was not to be summoned for love or money.

When I did finally get through to AAA later that night, it was by phone, and we arranged a service appointment for the flat tire the next morning between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m.. I gave detailed directions for finding the white whale, owing to the lack of mobile phone coverage outside of the show grounds and the size of the fairgrounds. I handed the flat tire to the next day’s agenda.

We had another amazing meal, and a walk up the beautiful hill behind the inn.

The next morning, Doug got up early to give me and my pets a ride to my abandoned car at the show even though he didn’t need to be there until 1 p.m. Aren’t friends great? We were there a few minutes before 8, as arranged, and I sat for about 45 minutes, my quiet phone in my hand, while I watched the woman who tells everyone where to park at work. A few cars tried to park next to the white whale, and I told the drivers that I had a flat and was waiting on AAA and they all wished me luck and chose to park someplace else.

Then, around 8:45, the woman who tells everyone where to park came over and hollered at me at some length, saying that I couldn’t tell people not to park next to me, and that anyway AAA wasn’t coming because they came earlier and couldn’t find me so they left.

While she was scolding me, I thought about what I might reply to the woman who tells everyone where to park, and decided that there was no reply that could improve my predicament at the moment. So I said nothing to her, stared at her dumbfounded, while she drove off in her golf cart to tell some other people where to park.

When I called AAA again, they were eager to connect me directly with the person who had been scheduled to deal with my flat that morning. This irritable man in Montpelier has no business doing roadside assistance for AAA, and had apparently shown up before our appointment at 8 a.m. that morning, and was now claiming he’d tried to call me repeatedly, that he’d spoken to the woman who tells everyone where to park, that she said she knew me and had searched the grounds for me, that she hadn’t found me, that she knew where I was staying and had called the manager of my hotel and had been told they didn’t know where I was. I unexpectedly terminated his telling of this ridiculous story because the man had escalated to shouting at me in addition to lying to me. My phone never rang; I had no missed calls or voicemail. If the woman who tells people where to park knows who I am I’d be very surprised and if she spoke to Tristan at the inn, well, I hope she wasn’t as rude to the innkeeper-dog as she was to me.

So, I started over with AAA, feeling pretty emotional about the heaping helpings of verbal abuse I’d had to take this morning and all before 9 a.m., and having had to explain that my tire had been flat since the day before, asking if they’d expected me to sleep in my car, and pausing my narrative to cry quietly but somewhat dramatically and making them wait.

Once I was able to finish telling what happened, and they pulled up my account and saw the details of my calls and scheduled appointment on their end, I could hear the change in pitch as true, righteous indignation crept into the voice of the AAA person on the phone. My call would be expedited, to a different shop, and I was told not to worry.

Actually, it was a nice day, I was at a dog show with my pets, I could go get a fruit flip soon and maybe there’d be time to show Fellow.

The new guy AAA sent from Rutland was nice, though his jack wasn’t quite up to the task of lifting the white whale, so we had to get out my jack, which was in the compartment in the floor in the way back, under the dog crates. So, once again, I unstrapped the dog crates, took out one dog, removed the first crate, put the dog back in the crate, took out the other dog, took out the other crate, and put the dog in his crate. Once we got the white whale up, the new guy was able to get 5 of the 6 freshly tightened lug nuts loose in good time and however he got the sixth one off is between him and his gods. I couldn’t watch.

I asked him to check the pressure on the spare, explaining that I was driving all the way back to New York on it, and he did, saying that it was full size, and it would be fine; it was just dirty.

Then I removed one dog from a crate at a time, lifted the kennels back into the white whale, replaced the dogs, strapped the crates back into place front and back, thanked the guy, hung a bucket of water and set up the fans and the reflective blanket so Eggi would stay cool while I showed Fellow.

Fellow and I had our best day of showing so far, with 192/200 points, which was good enough for a second place ribbon.

My friend Doug and Ksenia got a judge who was really digging seeing such a great example of an Azawakh, and gave her a nice owner-handled Group 2. Then we had the barbecue to go to, with great food, a real good band, and good fun.

When you went to summer camp as a kid, your counselors also made up songs to entertain you while you ate ribs and corn on the cob and baked beans and drank lemonade, and for this group of dog professionals, the fact that these handlers show up every year with a new song, which they’ve written and practiced just for this event may be one of the highlights of their year.

Last year, we came for a title. This year, I came to show both dogs in obedience, but mostly hoping to finish Eggi’s novice title. Fellow’s beginner novice title is finished, and he isn’t quite ready to compete at novice. Eggi managed to be just close enough to coming into or going out of season that she couldn’t quite keep it together for good scores in obedience. Or maybe it’s my nerves in the ring. So we will have to keep going.

Disbelief

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I just couldn’t do it yesterday. I might have. I had a couple of train rides, into the city, and then back again. But I was sleepy, and bored, did the KenKens in the paper and the crossword on my phone. So, once again, Thursday, I didn’t get it done.

The pandemic rages on.

The CDC is trying to offer some new advice about mask wearing, having lost so much credibility back in March of 2019 when they said we didn’t need masks. At the time, the Bacon Provider didn’t believe it, he said it was obviously airborne, and he bought a box of N-95s; we still have a few left. Later, some said the guidance was because the previous administration wasn’t prepared to tackle a public health emergency, and there weren’t enough masks to go around. More recently, the CDC issued guidance that vaccinated people could go without masks. Now they are changing their recommendation, but it isn’t clear. When I drove south earlier this month, I saw people clearly happy to go without a mask, because they’d never worn one, and never intended to.

My doctor’s office still requires you to wear a mask. So does the local pharmacy. But sure, Republican congressmen, do a lot of anti-mask stunts, to pander to your base. Make it political. Ok. It’s good for you, and no one else.

Captain, who thinks thunder is going to get him, beds can be made more comfortable by digging, and someday, he will catch the shiny.

I cleared my schedule Thursday to go to the dentist. I picked a train the night before, reset the login for the app you can use to buy tickets. Before I left, I made a haircut appointment for Saturday (the first since November of 2019), and called the vet I hadn’t heard from who was supposed to call me about that ultrasound. It was his day off. I repeated my request to send a report to my vet.

We no longer have annual passes for the parking lot, so I had to pay at the kiosk. The kiosk was just confusing enough that I managed to buy two, one-day parking passes, good for that day, and that day only. As a family with a bunch of little kids approached, I offered them a free parking pass. They were all wearing masks–even the baby in the stroller–and rushed past me without so much as a “No, thank you.” Like I shouldn’t be taking to them.

Once on the platform, I checked the screen for the 11:24 southbound train. It was not listed. I asked a woman sitting on the bench nearby. She said with amused puzzlement that, well, it was listed there just a minute ago. The next train wasn’t for an hour, which would not be in time for the dentist appointment. I would wait on the platform. Either it was coming, or it wasn’t.

An announcement: the 11:21 northbound train will be arriving at 11:31.

No word on the 11:24 southbound, and still no one else seemed alarmed.

When the train arrived, all thoughts gone of it ever not arriving.

Once on board, I had to figure out a seat for myself facing the right way. Half the seats on a MetroNorth train face one way, and the other half face the opposite way. That there are people in this world who can sit and ride a train backwards is almost incomprehensible to me.

Traffic into the city is reported to be back to pre-pandemic levels, but the trains run half-empty. Instead of ads in the train cars, there are posters reminding riders that we are required to wear a mask, we should try to stay six feet apart, and we should wash our hands. At White Plains, a trio of aging bros gets on and stands the whole way into the city. They talk about travel, and snow, and one of them keeps pulling down his mask when he wants to make a point. He pulls it back up when he listens.

Jorts

Because it took us so many days to get home from Eggi’s breeding, it was easy to put it out of our minds. Eggi seemed to be back to herself, certainly. We had a dog show to think about. I had written instructions from my repro vet to seek an ultrasound from a known, reliable veterinary radiologist, and to schedule it for 28 days post-LH surge. I called the office of a different repro vet, who is not as far from Bedhead Hills, thinking he would be a good backup to have in place in case of emergency. He came highly recommended from two of my trusted dog friends.

I made the appointment several weeks in advance, knowing as I did that the practice was very busy. All the vets are very busy now. The day of the appointment I had not slept well the night before, percolating with anxiety dreams. Eggi was hungry, but she was not looking very pregnant to me.

We left for the appointment at the front of the wave of bad rush hour traffic. Pushing along, we hit a slow spot, as cars weaved around some large pieces of tire tread, and I did not see the dead baby bear resting peacefully in the middle of the highway until I was almost on top of it. It looked like it was sleeping on I-84.

Schwartz thinks he is the main character in every story.

We showed up on time for our visit and because of pandemic restrictions there were signs in the parking lot saying to call to check in and stay in your car. So we did. A smiling vet tech who seemed about 14 came out with a clipboard. She pronounced the dog’s name, “Ugly?” and had the procedure wrong,  asked for a credit card and took my dog away. I sat in the hot car trying to steady myself for disappointing news.

When the vet tech returned, she told me the vet would call me, but congratulations, she’s pregnant. “Only one puppy, though,” she added. “Possibly two.”

I texted my husband, and hit the road. Having not met the vet, seen a picture, or been reassured, yes, really, I didn’t believe it. I waited a few days for the promised call, and it never came.

How am I supposed to believe a vet I haven’t met? Who hasn’t called? How do I protect myself from what might be disappointing news, especially now that I’ve had my hopes raised?

Eggi, who believes in cuddles, sometimes thinks the floor is lava, worries about strangers.

The dentist says my teeth look ok. She asks what’s new, and I tell her stories of my dogs, of picking a stud, of doing a breeding in a hotel room, of sitting in hot cars in the parking lots of various vets. She tells me she wants me to write a book. I say I will have to change all the names, to pretend it’s fiction.

I catch the 2:10 back to Bedhead Hills.

When I get back to my car, I discover that someone (or something) has taken a big shit in the narrow space between it and the next car. It seems fresh, or at least the big shiny green flies on it think it is.

Fellow believes that he is missing out on something

Today, my repro vet’s assistant calls to tell me that they received an emailed report about Eggi’s ultrasound, a blank PDF page with no masthead, and two sentence fragments: one stating that they confirmed finding one puppy and another indicating I should get a follow-up x-ray. It was so completely non-standard the assistant wondered if it was even real.

I held the elevator door

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What I saw: two guys, Broseph and Chad. Broseph filled the opening of the elevator door like a tank-top-wearing storm cloud, blocking the light from the sun. Chad blew in behind him, dressed in an American flag-striped polo, almost as big but pinker, because of the acne he was too old for.

What I did beforehand: flew to Florida, had dinner alone, wandered the forlorn aisles of the next-door liquor store, ducked a clerk watching a telenovela set in ancient plastic Egypt who called out to me repeatedly asking if I needed help finding anything. It wasn’t until I was driving home that it occurred to me I might have asked her about finding an amateur-friendly horse, under ten years old, nice enough to show in the dressage ring. Or better, why are we here, any of us? I should have asked her that.

IMG_2162What I wore: black suede Pumas, capri-length jeans, black tee shirt, scowl

Where I sat: the exit row

Who went with me: pocket friends

How I got tickets: a couple of weeks ago I saw an ad for a horse and contacted the sales agent about it. Within hours of my booking a trip to try it, I got two messages from friends saying, “Ooh! Look at this one!” and suggesting I go try it. It seemed fortuitous.

What it is: dressage horse shopping these days has become like an obscure subculture of internet dating, and is facilitated by an open Facebook group. You read ads, look at videos, show them to your trainer and friends, saying, “Ooh! Look at this one!” You talk to people on the phone, and sometimes even fly to other cities on the chance that they’ve got the horse you’re looking for. You wonder if you’re crazy. You hope you’re going to be safe. I tried horses on one previous trip that I couldn’t really steer and on another trip, a horse that wouldn’t stop. The people I’ve met doing this have been extremely pleasant and nice and as open to the weirdness of some random, unknown person showing up to ride their horse as I have had to be to the weirdness of riding some random, unknown horse.

elevator6

Things that were not funny: a group of construction workers crossed my path as they passed from the pool deck to the interior of the hotel. I was dressed in riding clothes, and more than one of them felt it would be ok to make “appreciative” hissing noises about me.

Things that were sad: dinner alone next to the mating turtle salt-and-pepper shakers at a strip mall Thai restaurant.

elevator1

Things that were funny: trying to convince the owner of the Thai restaurant to make my food spicy enough.

Something I ate: massaman curry that was actually spicy enough

elevator2

What about the horse: that story is to come.

elevator5

What happened on the elevator: when Broseph and Chad stepped onto the elevator with me, they thought I was holding the door open for them. Really I was pressing the button for my floor. So they thanked me, and I said, “Sure.”

Then the door closed, revealing a big ad for the hotel chain we were in, with the word “selfie” and a dog wearing sunglasses. I said, “You know, a dog can’t really take a selfie. No thumbs.”

Chad agreed. “I know, right?” said he, adding, “It’s like anything can be anything these days.”

As I stepped off the elevator, I threw in, “I mean….Look who’s president.”

I left the cat in charge

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What I did: like you know, last year, a barn friend, S., invited me to join her on this trip to Florida to watch the winter circuit horse show, shop, and do sunshine; I was like, “Pick me,” but then couldn’t get shit organized at home. I have pets and sourdough to feed, don’t you know. This year, I said yes, and left the cat in charge.


What I did beforehand: you don’t have to leave written instructions for the cat. I figured the dogs would  let him know when they were hungry or needed to crap someplace other than the kitchen floor.

What I packed: sunscreen, gray jeans, white J. Crew linen swimsuit coverup, bathing suit, yoga clothes, three polo shirts, underwear and socks.

Something I packed and didn’t wear: a sun hat.

Something I ran out of: shirts.


Who went with me: S. and K. from the barn. S.’s friend D. joined us from Germany. 

How I got tickets: online, from JetBlue, at the end of November.

Why I saw this show: I think S. wanted us to be able to see the FEI  Grand Prix CDI 5* at the 2017 Adequan® Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, FL, which we saw, in addition to the Grand Prix freestyle competition. 

Where I sat: in the bleachers and in the VIP tent, because S. is well-connected through volunteer leadership work she does for the Jewish World Games. 

Where I stayed: at the Casa Passivo-Aggressivo, a bed and breakfast  in West Palm Beach which you should not confuse with the nearby Passivo-Aggressivo Bed and Breakfast, just a couple of blocks away. And don’t mention the confusion to your hosts, because the rivalry is old and bitter.

We were told we couldn’t have breakfast, 
which was included with our rooms, 
because we didn’t tell them the night 
before what time we wanted it. 

Things that were not funny: hearing S. explain that the Jewish World Games have been around since the 1930s and how Jews might want their own international sports competition, and, of course, why. She’s quite upbeat and polite. Then there was like this famous trainer who I met at a barn visit on S.’s World Jewish Games business, who was sure we’d met.

Things that were interesting: S.’s friend D. whispered to me all about what to look for in a correctly ridden and trained Grand Prix horse and told me that she thinks this one famous U.S. Olympic Dressage rider SP is an artist; he took third in both classes we saw him compete in.

Things that were sort of funny: K.’s connections got us seats at a super cool fundraiser where we were assigned to sit at SP’s table. I could only imagine myself saying something I would regret, so I didn’t have the courage to talk to him, but S. did. He was very nice, and so was his staff who also sat at our table.

Things that were not actually funny: a second snowstorm rolled into New York while we were all in Florida and our flight back on Sunday was cancelled. JetBlue sent us emails saying they’d re-book us, but we didn’t trust them to get us home in time for our obligations so we all scrambled to get back on the same flight only on Monday. By the time we heard from JetBlue, they’d booked us to leave several days later.

That thing where you go for a goofy selfie
and your friend doesn’t 
Things that were cool:  S. wanted a ride to the show grounds on a golf cart because she wanted to experience everything, and we got it on the bonus day. The benefit show featured a group that works horses at liberty, up to eight at a time. It was beautiful and exciting and I could hear horse people at other tables comparing the performer’s control over her herd to their own horses. 

Something I ate: there were these short-rib empanadas being passed by a woman carrying a tray that we had to chase around the room.

Something I didn’t eat: breakfast at our B&B.

Casa Passivo-Aggressivo hospitality 
included notes that appeared on the doors. 


Who should see it: fans of dressage. 

What I saw on the way home: the Atlantic Ocean, which is acidifying as a result of global warming. The last half hour of the flight was super bumpy because of a windstorm, but the flight attendant said they knew what they were doing so I just tried to close my eyes and deal with it. A woman in the row ahead of me whooped and commented about the bigger bumps. I wanted her to shut up. At least the kitchen floor was clean when I got home.


I stayed at the Waldorf Astoria

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Elevator Selfie Ceiling 
Where I stayed: the venerated art-deco icon Waldorf Astoria. On Park Avenue at 48th Street in Manhattan. 

What I did beforehand: baked and didn’t burn the bread, riding lesson,  shower, dog walk, drove to town, dragged a wheelie bag along the freshly salted sidewalks, made the train with seconds to spare. 


What I wore: James jeans, black shirt, gray cardigan, Danner hiking boots, big parka, antique earrings that I broke when I took them off.



Who went with me: the Bacon Provider (see photo, top)

How I got there: walked up the Northwest Passage from Grand Central, taking two elevators up, one down, and a huge flight of stairs.



Why I stayed here: the Bacon Provider had an action-packed schedule in the city this week, with meetings starting at 7:45 a.m. and lasting until after dinner. 

Where I slept: here.



Things that were sad: the carpets are tired and stained. The lobby is poorly lit. Once, this was my father’s favorite high-end hotel in New York. I stayed here with him on the college visiting trip he took me on in 1980. We ate dinner in the hotel and there was a woman in a gown playing the harp. It had never occurred to me that anyone other than cartoon angels and Harpo Marx actually played the instrument before. Also, people looked at my dad and I kind of funny, not like we were a dad and his college-bound kid, but like he was a creepy 40 year old, and I his jail-bait girlfriend. 



Things that were funny: paying $25 for a champagne cocktail, and even ordering a second one. 


Things that were not funny: the serious guy carrying his fancy poodle to breakfast in a suitcase; the lack of outlets; finding a charge for a $36 shoe-shine on our bill at checkout. The Bacon Provider is extraordinarily particular about caring for his shoes, takes great pride in doing it himself, had no such shoe shine (which I knew without asking him), and when I disputed the charge the receptionist did not believe me, said that a charge like that could only appear on the bill with a manager’s approval, and did not remove it, despite telling me that she would.


Something I ate: continental breakfast



What it is: a fine, old, fancy hotel that will close in a few weeks for remodeling; most rooms are expected to become condos. The hotel was purchased for almost $2B by a Chinese insurance company. 

Who should see it: anyone who wants to reminisce about what seemed like classy, old-money luxury in the 1980s. Hurry.

The painting has a hole in it

What I saw on the way home: the bright winter sunlight made me carsick on the train. Or maybe I was just hungover. When’s the next election?


I stayed at the NU Hotel in Brooklyn

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Where I stayed: the NU Hotel, in Downtown Brooklyn at 85 Smith Street, amidst the bail bonds places serving the nearby Brooklyn House of Detention. 


What I did beforehand: tried and failed to sleep in, had bad feelings about things, put pajamas and a toothbrush in a bag, did some driving, arrived and shit.



What I wore: a feeling of dread.

Who went with me: the Bacon Provider. 

How I got reservations: online, a few days in advance. 



Why I stayed here: we had tickets to “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” at BAM.

Where I lounged: the room had a hammock. 



Things that were sad: I have had to learn to drink scotch.

Things that were funny: sleeping in a leather upholstered compartment.



Things that were not funny: how happy I was that there were two sinks.



Something I ate: brunch including Eggs Louie and duck fat potatoes at French Louie, around the corner.


What it is: a more stylish hotel than the nearby Hilton, at a deep discount compared to a similar place in Manhattan.


Who should see it: folks in need of a downtown Brooklyn hotel, easily accessible to many subway lines into Manhattan.


What I saw when I got home: my job as toilet paper replenisher is secure.


I ran an errand

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What I did: flew to Florida to get a car and drove it home to Bedhead Hills, New York.

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What I did beforehand: JetBlue from LaGuardia–just one of New York City’s three perfectly terrible airports.

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Who went with me: the Bacon Provider.

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What I wore: James jeans and orange Pumas.

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Why I went: there are things you will do for some people that you might not be willing to do for anyone else.

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Where I sat: five hours driving, five hours navigating, repeat.

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Things that were delicious: we stopped for barbecue near Savannah, Georgia.
Things that were sad: when we were 100 miles from anywhere, deep in South Carolina, I looked at one of the three oil gauges to see the needle in the red. The car has separate gauges for oil level, oil temperature, and oil pressure. The gauge indicating badness, we determined, was the oil level gauge. A quick check using the dipstick contradicted the gauge. But it also revealed that a rather large hole had opened in a hose. 
Things that were funny: we tried two kinds of tape but neither stuck. 

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Things that were awesome: we stopped at the almost-halfway point, in North Carolina, at K. & B.’s. They hosted a little kid birthday party that day, and already had other houseguests, and did not hesitate to say we could stay the night. They even waited to start dinner until they knew we’d be in time. Good thing I brought homemade gifts.
What it is: 1200 miles in two days.

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Who should see it: people who love to drive and don’t mind going without cup-holders.

What I saw on the way home:

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Budapest #3: The Synagogue, The Elgin Marbles, and the China Syndrome

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Let me tell you straight off, we did not make it into the synagogue in Budapest. Yes, it was on the short list of things we were told we had to do. Yes, we went and found it twice. But on the day we found it and had actually set aside the morning to see the inside of it, we arrived after several hundred other people had the idea to see the inside of it, and got there before us, and stood, in a great scrum, with their shit together a bit more ours.
Crowd outside the synagogue, Budapest

When I was in high school a friend and I went to London to visit another friend whose family had moved there. We dutifully tried to do every touristy thing imaginable, as if filling out a Bingo card, including two whole days at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at spoons and armor, and getting on the wrong train to what ended up being my favorite museum in London (the Imperial War Museum) and being heckled by a crusty old guy who cackled about us being from Shepherd’s Bush. But try as we might we never made it to see the Elgin Marbles, and it became the thing we giggled about the most. Nothing’s more hilarious to teenaged girls than an inside joke.
I also never saw The China Syndrome. The China Syndrome came out in 1979, starring Jane Fonda, who I thought was generally ok in movies, and Jack Lemmon, who I thought was pretty awesome, and I think it was playing at the Esquire Theater, or maybe the Shady Oak, and though I made a big show of saying that I was going to see it, reasoning that it was a movie I might have actually wanted to see, checking the movie times and everything, I used the excuse to go get stoned with someone. I no longer remember who it was. Back then, I did not make up weird specific lies about what I was up to, usually, because I had very good grades and reasonably nice friends and my mother’s attitude was we could do what we wanted as long as we stayed out of trouble, which really meant, fundamentally, that we didn’t get caught. Probably, there was a family thing that I was avoiding going to by inventing the seeing of a movie I never intended to see.
The time I didn’t see The China Syndrome was not the only time I smoked pot in high school, but I have no memory of how I obtained it on any occasion. It seems unlikely I would have known who to get it from. Also, no way would I have spent money on it when there were sweaters to buy. Anyway, The China Syndrome came to stand for lying to your parents so you could go do dumb stuff.
To this day I have not seen The China Syndrome. I did not even know what it was about until I looked it up.
When we meant to go to the big synagogue in Budapest, but didn’t, it was not an Elgin Marbles thing (just not getting around to it), or a China Syndrome thing (saying we would when we never intended to). We had a morning plan and it was seeing the synagogue. We also had an afternoon plan, so the collapse of the morning plan meant immediate implementation of the afternoon plan.

On the tram


Our consolation for missing the synagogue was taking the tram up to the yellow bridge, known as Margit Híd. The people who put streetcars in cities back in the day knew what they were doing; the people of Budapest who have fought to keep their clunky old electric trams know what they are doing.  The afternoon plan, now the primary plan was to walk back over to the Buda side of Budapest to find the Tomb of Gül Baba, an Ottoman dervish and Islamic poet who died in 1541. It is said to be the northernmost Muslim holy place and the oldest historic landmark in all of Budapest. Hungary has been overrun many times in its history, and the Turks had their turn under Suleiman I back in the 1500s.
It is marked not by a fading sign in Hungarian but with one of those man-sized bronze statues they have of all the great men of Hungary, all over the city. There he is: Gül Baba standing at the entrance, on a smallish plinth, and there, just around the bend, the backdrop: a closed and padlocked gate, flanked with an old Budweiser sign and a smaller one for the now-closed café. 
I heard the crow before I saw him

This quiet hilltop was guarded by a single crow, solemnly serving in his uniform of a dark gray jacket and black, black wings, and he cawed and bobbed in genuinely surprise at our arrival.

The tomb is an octagonal little stone building with one door and one window and a domed roof. We were alone there, walking slowly over broken pavement and weeds. Two dogs were having at it, loudly, in a hidden yard, below, their barks piercing the quiet sunshine. A car struggling to get up the narrow, rutted street, bottomed out, scraping violently on the cobblestones. Having been alerted to its presence, we took this to be the right way back down the hill.

Budapest #1

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We’ve been here in Budapest a couple of days and so far we’ve been delighted by things small and not small. The perfect spring weather helps. 

Today, we started with hotel breakfast, where they did not manage to burn the bacon to my liking but it was still delicious. After that, we went for a walk in search of maybe a hat or sunglasses but found ourselves walking one of those streets that shows up in the guidebook as “where you should go shopping” but we would only describe it as “where you should never go under any circumstances unless maybe you wanted to make video footage of terrible restaurant barkers.” Bleh. Tourist traps! But then, we wandered over to the Central Market Hall where they sell, you know, like, real traditional Hungarian cured meats, and the spices, and wines, and all the fruits and the vegetables, like Budapest’s version of the Pike Place Market. It was gorgeous and full of Hungarians. 

Központi Vásárcsarnok


After that, we crossed one of the many scenic and lovely bridges over the Danube to the Buda side of the city, and on an impulse headed up the hill to the citadel. This park is full of crumbling steps and dilapidated railings and increasingly stunning views and an uneven path up to the fortress at the top and I would recommend the climb to anyone just coming to the city and seeking a way to see it all, because you get to see it from above. After that we walked down the other side to Bartók street and chose a random café for lunch and it was great and then, after admiringly watching those yellow streetcar/tram things going by we took one back over to the Pest side where our hotel was and could not figure out how to actually pay for the trip.

BARTÓK BÉLA ÚT

After that, we needed a rest but then after that we went and had high tea and then we got dressed because we had bought opera tickets.

It was the Janáček opera Jenůfa and if you don’t want spoilers about the plot of this opera skip the next paragraph.
If you don’t mind spoilers, I will start off by telling you that I always Google the plot of operas before I see them so I know what I’m getting myself into. I am a good audience member in that I laugh at the funny parts and cry at the sad parts and mostly I need to know in advance when I need to be prepared to be sad or happy or whatever. So let me just say (here come the spoilers) that this is an opera about a dead baby. And it did make me cry, twice, but briefly. I am also a bad audience member in that I get bored easily at the opera, and I’m not what I would consider an actually educated opera fan but I have gone to a bunch of them over the years and I usually enjoy them if they are not too long. I don’t mind extremely sad operas or even the ones where people take a long time dying on stage and singing their guts out at each other (looking at you Tristan and Isolde). 

Anyway, the old opera house in Budapest is glorious and seems gently well-preserved in a not-kept-wrapped-in-plastic-to-preserve-the-freshness kind of way. It’s extravagantly gorgeous, with painted ceilings and a lot of marble and gold leaf, but not gargantuan like the Met in New York. And our tickets were the nicest seats in the house, in a little box on the dress circle, and were about $50 each, which doesn’t even buy cheap seats in New York.
Most of the guidebooks to Budapest will recommend seeing the opera house, because it is very beautiful and special, and, yes, it is those things, but it is also an opera house and you are supposed to see an opera there.

Operaház

So if you go to Budapest, you should not go to the opera house and take a freaking guided tour. You should put on your dress or a tie or both and go to the freaking opera. The tickets will be much less than New York, the opera will be good, you can read the supertitles in English, the sparking wine at intermission will be more than adequate, and then, at the very end, when you are clapping and watching the many singers and principals and the orchestra and the conductor and all the many members of the audience sharing this experience, you can reflect, as I did, upon the many, many hours of musical education and practice that went into this one night happening. And you, like me, might be really grateful that there were people ready to teach all those musicians to sing and/or play, way back like 30-40 years ago.

Other Vacationers

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Some of the other vacationers
We had been here just long enough that we’d grown restless from eating in the hotel for breakfast and dinner, and last night made plans to try the bigger resort next door. Our hotel is a small, quiet, boutique affair on a broad crescent of Caribbean beach, where all the neighboring properties seem larger and louder. Some are teeming with tourists, their stew of folks from all over seasoned with drawling, boisterous, hard-drinking Americans, like that one who tells the waiter, “It don’t matter,” and then makes him explain every item on the menu, because she, “don’t want nothing fishy.”
At the encouragement of several members of hotel staff and cab drivers, we walked down to the community Thursday fish fry, in the park. Nothing is especially cheap on this island, and when we bought two bottles of local beer, it came in big, milky plastic cups and was $10. There were many food vendors, so I guessed the best was the one with the longest line. Even the grilled corn was going to be $3 an ear. We lined up and drank our beer.
“Hey, it’s Missouri!” shouts the big pink fellow ahead of us in line for conch fritters.
He elbows his wife. She’s distractedly humping the air, dancing to the reggaeton blasting from the stage. Her eyes don’t focus on his face, but she peels her lips away from her teeth in a grimace of recognition. Is that a drunken smile? “You know,” she continues, speaking upward into the direction of the other couple in line with them, “Those Canadians are traveling with their kids.”
“Who wants to pay for all that!?” hoots her husband with a vote of support.
She jabs him back with an elbow of agreement, missing his belly and tipping not imperceptibly off balance.
Our hotel is full of people traveling with their kids. There was the tiny gent at dinner the other night in tiny navy topsiders without socks and tiny pressed khakis and a tiny white polo shirt and tiny suspenders. I was really looking forward to seeing him entertain himself with a parent’s pocket full of tiny cars, or a bunch of stickers and a new coloring book, but, no, his mom hauled out an iPad and set him up watching the glowing screen like a zombie, and the parents spoke in hushed tones in Russian without even glancing at him in his stupor. Do they even give out crayons in restaurants anymore?
Then there is what I call the Chas Tenenbaum family: with the nerdy dad in white tube socks and tightly belted, high-waisted khaki pants, the trim looker of a dark blond wife an obvious emblem of his financial success, and his matched set of curly-black-haired boys, the spitting images of dad, never out of arm’s reach, despite being on the verge of properly rambunctious Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn sort of ready-for-adventure age.
Contrast these to the French Canadians we hear thundering in circles upstairs whose arrival in the restaurant is announced by their three squealing miniature ruffians. They appear to be five year old brother and sister twins, with a bonus 4 year old brother who can’t quite always keep up but will fling himself forward and over and around and through in every effort to. The father doesn’t stop talking, and the mother doesn’t even glance down to see them kick off and deposit their shoes under her chair at breakfast so they can run tight laps on the patio, tagging each other with wadded napkins clasped in their unsupervised and undisciplined fingers screaming in their own unintelligible blend of French and English. Their breakfast ended in tears as the youngest slipped the room key into a crack in the table and couldn’t get it out.
It’s not just families with small children here. There are a number of older couples, and I am as charmed by the careful escort of the frail wife to the water as I was the young mother with sleeping infant on her chest under a beach umbrella. There is a moment at the water’s edge, where the surf rolls in and out and the footing is rough and loose, where a couple of the unsteadier guests have needed an arm to hold and a word of encouragement.
The day before yesterday, Chas Tenenbaum and the boys took a football to the sand and stood not far enough apart in a triangle tossing it. None of them seemed to have ever tossed a football before, and the younger boy missed every catch. The mother puttered about the loungers and joined them, making a square. The figure formed by the bodies constantly reformed as the ball dropped, the only sound that carried to me was the mother’s apologies.
And then yesterday, at the beach, the Chas Tenenbaums commandeered a stand-up paddleboard as a family and were taking turns balancing on it, mom at the tail and dad at the nose. When the dad took his turn on the thing, the little one pressed on the board near his mother, at the nose, insisting, “I’ll stabilize it.”
“No,” the father shouted. “Get off.”
Soon enough, he lost his balance and fell in again. The parents dragged the board back to its spot on the sand and retreated to their lounge chairs, and the kids swam, bobbing in the swells. In the end, there was just the younger boy left, only his nose and forehead visible, floating purposelessly in the water. Finally, a moment of entertaining himself.

On our way to dinner, we saw the older couple with the fragile wife, trying to take selfies in the pastel light of a beach sunset. She was unhesitant in asking me to take a picture of them, with her iPhone. It’s still one of my favorite things to do: take pictures of strangers for them. We promised her a full report on the restaurant next door.